\ 

OUT  OF  THE  PAST 


(CRITICAL  AND  LITERARY  PAPERS.) 


BY 

PARKE    GODWIN. 


NEW    YORK: 
G.     P.     PUTNAM    &    SONS. 

1870. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1870,  by 
O.   P.   PUTNAM  &  SONS, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Southern 
District  of  New  York. 


ereotyped  by  LITTLE,  KKNNIK  &  Co.,  i'Ki:ss  OF 

645  and  647  Broadway,  N.  Y.  THE   NEW  YORK   VHINTIXG  COMPA; 

81,  83,  and  85  Centre  St.,  N.  Y. 


PREFACE. 


I  GATHER  these  essays  out  of  the  anonymous  and 
desultory  writing  of  many  past  years — not  because  I 
suppose  them  to  possess  any  particular  literary  value, 
but  simply  to  show  what  little  part  I  may  have  taken  in 
various  discussions. 

Written  in  moments  snatched  from  the  labors  of  an 
exacting  profession,  they  are  more  imperfect  than  they 
would  have  been  with  a  larger  leisure  at  my  command. 
They  are  reprinted,  however,  substantially  as  they  were 
first  published  ;  I  have  pruned  away  certain  redun 
dances  with  a  pretty  free  hand  ;  here  and  there,  where 
the  meaning  seemed  obscure,  I  have  added  a  sentence 
or  a  paragraph  to  help  it  out  ;  but  no  change  has  been 
made  in  any  sentiment  or  thought.  To  have  rendered 
the  essays  what  I  should  now  like  them  to  be,  would 
have  been  to  re-write  them,  which  was  impossible. 

My  political  and  social  papers  I  hope  some  time  or 
other  to  collect  into  a  volume  like  the  present. 


30557 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

BRYANT'S  POEMS 9 

JEREMY  BENTHAM  AND  LAW  REFORM 22 

EDWARD  LIVINGSTON  AND  HIS  CODE 56 

JOURNALISM 75 

JOHN  JAMES  AUDUBON 89 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY in 

THE  LAST  HALF-CENTURY 145 

AMERICAN  AUTHORSHIP 176 

ALISON'S  HISTORIES  OF  EUROPE 196 

THE  "  WORKS"  OF  AMERICAN  STATESMEN 221 

COMTE'S   PHILOSOPHY 251 

STRAUSS'S  LIFE  OF  JESUS 288 

THE  LATE  HORACE  BINNEY  WALLACE 302 

THACKERAY  AS  NOVELIST 326 

GOETHE 34 1 

RUSKIN'S  WRITINGS 367 

CAUSES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 394 

MOTLEY'S  RISE  OF  THE  DUTCH  REPUBLIC 422 

EMERSON  ON  ENGLAND 441 


EARLIER   WRITINGS. 


BRYANT'S    POEMS.* 

E  design  to  express  our  opinion  of  the  merit 
of  these  poems.  To  speak  what  we  think, 
plainly  and  freely,  will  only  be  discharging  a 
debt  of  gratitude  that  has  been  accumulating  for  a  long 
while. 

That  they  should  have  passed  through  four  large  edi 
tions  is  some  indication  of  the  existence  among  us  of  a 
pure  taste  ;  at  least,  the  author  has  no  right  to  complain. 
He  has  found  favor  enough  to  satisfy  a  vanity  more  in 
ordinate  than  we  take  his  to  be.  His  verses  have  been 
read  extensively,  and  praised  as  often  as  they  were  read  ; 
quoted  frequently,  and  always  with  admiration  ;  and  re- 
published  time  and  again  in  every  magazine  and  news 
paper  from  the  land  of  the  Pilgrims  to  that  of  the 
Cherokees.  The  more  accomplished  his  readers,  the 
keener  their  relish  of  the  repast  which  he  has  furnished. 
Nevertheless,  would  not  some  of  his  warmest  admirers 
be  surprised  to  learn  his  true  rank  as  a  poet  ?  Suppose 
we  were  to  compare  him,  not  with  "the  ever-during 
few,"  with  Spenser,  Shakspeare,  Milton,  who  hold  the 


*  Poems    by  William    Cullen    Bryant.    Fifth   Edition. 
Brothers,  1839. 

From  the  Democratic  Review,  Oct.  1839. 


Harper  & 


i  o.      .....  J$Kcuitls  -  *Pocms. 


first  place,  but  with  those  just  below  them,  with  Collins, 
Cowper,  Wordsworth,  and  their  like,  would  it  betray  any 
want  of  critical  sagacity?  We  confess  it  is  our  convic 
tion,  that,  estimated  according  to  the  strictest  rules  of 
art,  his  poetry  is  not  inferior  to  their  best.  Without 
running  a  formal  parallel,  we  shall  endeavor  to  state 
why  and  in  what  respect  we  think  so,  by  describing 
what  we  conceive  to  be  its  chief  characteristics. 

Sometimes  we  are  disposed  to  think  exquisite  grace 
and  propriety  of  expression  his  principal  excellence.  It 
seems  as  if  his  whole  study  had  been  how  his  thoughts 
might  be  most  beautifully  uttered.  Not  only  are  words 
not  misused,  which  would  be  small  praise  indeed,  but 
none  occur  that  any  process  of  refinement  can  improve. 
Their  precision  is  remarkable,  unaccompanied  as  it  is 
by  any  loss  of  elegance  or  force.  Warmth  and  rich 
ness  are  not  sacrificed  to  mere  dry  and  meagre  chastity. 
Most  writers,  when  they  attempt  neatness,  become  hard 
and  cold  ;  flexibility  is  exchanged  for  accuracy  ;  and 
their  frigid  phrases,  perhaps  well  adapted  to  a  meta 
physical  treatise,  are  altogether  out  of  place  in  verse. 
By  laboring  too  exclusively  after  niceness,  they  neglect 
\vhat  is  of  far  more  importance  in  the  effective  use  of 
words,  juiciness.  This  is  never  the  case  with  Bryant. 
With  all  his  exactness  of  expression  he  is  ever  racy, 
\varm,  suggestive.  Certain  of  his  pieces  it  is  impossi 
ble  to  read  without  gliding  unconsciously  into  a  thou 
sand  trains  of  associated  thought.  A  single  epithet 
sometimes  tells  many  a  secret.  For  instance,  in  the 
"  Death  of  Schiller,"  how  that  one  term,  "the  peering 
Chinese,"  brings  up  all  the  peculiarities  as  well  of 
Chinese  life  as  of  Chinese  features  !  And,  again  in  the 
Greek  Boy,  whom  he  regards  as 

"  A  shoot  of  that  old  vine  which  made 

The  nations  silent  in  its  shade," 


Bryant's  Poems.  1 1 

does  not  old  Greece,  in  her  glory  and  magnificence, 
and  yet  with  somewhat  of  a  mournful  grandeur,  move 
before  us,  as  in  a  stately  funeral  procession  ? 

Delicacy  and  refinement  of  language  are  of  course 
incompatible  with  the  least  mark  of  turgidness.  There 
is,  therefore,  no  tumid  pomp,  no  forced  strength  — 
none  of  the  inflation  of  Thomson,  nor  of  the  unnatural 
and  pompous  splendor  of  Young.  Then  his  versifica 
tion  is  no  less  exquisite  than  his  choice  of  language, 
and  manifests  no  less  the  skilfulness  of  the  accomplished 
artist.  It  combines  melody  and  freedom  \vith  correct 
ness.  An  ear  the  most  perfectly  attuned  detects  no  false 
quantities  nor  discordant  rhythms.  Line  follows  line 
in  liquid  harmony.  A  certain  mellowness  and  smooth 
flow  beguiles  the  mind  by  a  kind  of  fascination,  as  if  the 
ancient  conception  of  the  lyric  had  been  more  than 
realized,  and  poetry  become  music.  Yet  the  versifica 
tion  is  adapted  to  the  subject.  In  that  grand  ode  "  To 
the  Past,"  the  lines  move  with  a  slow  and  solemn  step, 
befitting  the  theme,  while  in  the  "Song  of  the  Stars," 
they  dart  away  with  the  joyousness  and  buoyancy  of 
youth,  like  "the  orbs  of  beauty  and  spheres  of  flame" 
— that  go  dancing  over  the  widening  wastes  of  the 
sky. 

Bryant  possesses,  however,  other  and  higher  requi 
sites  of  the  genuine  poet.  An  eminent  writer,  himself 
aspiring  to  the  highest  place  in  the  poetical  literature 
of  England,  has  told  us  what  those  requisites  are, 
and  they  are  just  those  which  our  poet  has  in  a  signal 
degree.*  As  to  sensibility,  no  man  ever  lived  more 
delicately  susceptible  of  external  influences.  Not  only 
is  his  eye  open  to  the  forms  of  nature,  but  every  fibre  of 
his  being  seems  to  be  tremblingly  alive  to  them:  like 

*  Wordsworth.      See  preface  to  Lyrical  Ballads, 


12  Bryant's  Poems. 

the  strings  of  an  Eolian  harp,  which  the  faintest  breath 
of  the  wind  can  waken.  His  observation  of  the  out 
ward  world  has  been  both  varied  and  minute.  Natural 
objects,  with  their  infinite  diversity  of  name,  shape,  and 
hue,  are  the  constant  companions  of  his  thoughts. 
From  the  spire  of  grass  to  the  huge  mountain  oak  ; 
from  the  violet,  in  its  silent  retreats,  to  the  bright  and 
boundless  firmament ;  from  the  shy  bird,  brooding  in 
the  deep  and  quiet  woods,  to  the  stars  in  their  eternal 
dances.  Streams,  and  woods,  and  meadows,  and  skies 
mingle  in  all  his  musings — form  a  part,  indeed,  of  his 
intellectual  being.  The  seasons,  with  their  thousand 
alternating  influences,  with  their  smiles  and  tears,  with 
their  sunshine  and  gloom  ;  day  and  night,  with  their 
strange  contrasts  ;  forests,  where  gush  the  silver  foun 
tains  ;  thick  groves,  with  verdant  roofs  and  mossy 
floors ;  trees  in  their  stateliness  and  beauty ;  lone 
lakes  ;  the  song  of  birds  ;  the  soft  whisper  of  the  even 
ing  winds,  and  the  gentle  murmur  of  the  brooks,  have 
been  to  him  a  delightful  study. 

This  familiarity  with  nature  gives  freshness  and  truth 
to  his  descriptions.  They  are  not  like  the  collections 
of  a  naturalist,  dry  specimens  of  withered  leaves  and 
decayed  plants ;  but  at  all  times  warm,  picturesque, 
faithful.  They  present  nature  in  all  her  original  life 
and  glowing  beauty.  Opening  the  book  at  any  page 
is  like  transporting  one's  self  to  the  free  air  and  broad 
prospects  of  the  country.  Lovely  sights  and  sweet 
sounds  are  about  us,  and  we  gaze  earnestly  on  green 
leaves  and  running  brooks,  and  listen,  delighted,  to  the 
lowing  of  herds. 

Bryant's  writings  are  also  marked  by  instances  of  re 
fined  as  well  as  vigorous  imagination.  How  striking 
is  that  passage  in  the  "  Prairies,"  in  which,  lost  in  the 
musings  prompted  by  the  sublime  solitude,  we  hear  in 


Bryant's  Poems.  13 

the  domestic  hum  of  the  bee,  "a  more  adventurous 
colonist  than  man,  the  tramp  of  that  advancing  multi 
tude  which  soon  shall  fill  the  borders  !"  And  these  few 
lines  taken  from  the  "  Earth," 

"  From  battle-fields, 

Where  heroes  madly  drove  and  dashed  their  hosts 
Against  each  other,  rises  up  a  noise, 
As  if  the  armed  multitudes  of  dead 
Stirred  in  their  heavy  slumber." 

Indeed,  the  whole  of  this  poem,  and  Thanatopsis, 
The  Past,  and  the  Hymn  to  Death,  are  magnificent  em 
bodiments  of  imagination.  Vast  as  are  the  themes, 
giving  scope  for  the  boldest  and  broadest  flights,  and 
exciting  the  highest  sense  of  sublimity,  they  are  treated 
with  a  corresponding  grandeur  of  language  and  thought. 
A  vein  of  the  most  elevated  philosophy  pervades  them, 
deeply  serious  in  its  tone  ;  but  of  that  seriousness  which 
is  inseparable  from  the  awful  truths  related  to  our  mys 
terious  human  being.  While  we  read  them,  a  solemn 
and  impressive  awe  falls  upon  us  ;  we  listen  as  we 
should  to  the  utterances  of  a  prophet,  or  as  though  we 
heard  at  midnight  the  choral  symphonies  of  Heaven 
floating  down  from  the  skies. 

The  healthy  judgment  of  our  author  has  shown  itself 
in  all  his  writings.  Both  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
lesser  details  of  verse,  and  the  utterance  of  sentiments 
and  thoughts,  his  judgment  is  equally  evident.  The 
force  of  the  language,  the  perfection  of  the  style,  the 
appropriateness  of  the  imagery,  the  simple  and  just  fer 
vor  of  his  feelings,  the  fidelity  of  his  descriptions,  the 
cheerfulness  of  his  aspirations,  and  the  manly  moral 
tone  that  pervades  every  line,  prove  that  he  possesses, 
along  with  intense  poetic  sensibility,  the  most  unques 
tionable  good  sense.  We  find  nowhere  indications  of 


14  Bryant's  Poems. 

disease,  no  want  of  justness  and  harmony,  no  straining 
after  effect,  no  affected  point  or  brilliancy,  no  starts 
and  fits,  no  agonies  of  passion,  no  mawkish  sensitive 
ness,  no  morbid  misanthropy,  no  repulsive  egotism,  no 
unhealthy  yearning  for  sympathy,  no  childish  com 
plaints  of  the  neglect  of  the  world,  or  of  the  cruel  se 
verities  of  Providence ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  all  is  pure 
and  wholesome,  the  sincere  production  of  one  that  re 
gards  nature  and  society  with  the  mind  and  heart  of  a 
wise  man,  contented  with  the  allotments  of  Heaven, 
and  laboring  through  the  humblest  duties  with  right 
earnest  and  cheerful  good-will. 

The  spirit  of  these  writings  is,  therefore,  no  less  to 
be  admired  than  their  outward  graces  and  perfections. 
A  gentleness  as  soft  as  that  of  woman,  a  tenderness 
mild  and  tearful  as  early  love,  simplicity  like  that  of 
unconscious  youth,  are  joined  to  the  lofty  philosophy 
of  a  sage.  Innumerable  are  the  passages  that  touch 
our  best  feelings,  sinking  quietly  into  the  heart,  and 
melting  it,  like  a  strain  of  music,  into  liquid  joy  and 
love.  Whatever  is  peaceful,  lovely,  delicate,  or  kind, 
most  strongly  affects  the  writer's  imagination.  He 
walks  abroad  in  the  world,  he  takes  in  all  things  of 
earth  and  air,  he  ascends  the  stream  of  history,  and  is 
arrested  only  by  the  beautiful  in  nature,  art,  and  the 
actions  of  men.  He  is  like  one  loitering  in  groves  of 
bloom  to  gather  there  the  choicest  flowers.  In  his 
view  the  rugged  and  the  discordant  have  no  charms, 
the  struggles  of  despair,  the  ravages  of  storm ful  pas 
sion,  the  thousand  jarring  scenes  of  life,  are  seen  only 
to  suggest  a  deep  commiseration.  Even  when  our 
hearts,  by  some  simple  phrase,  are  made  to  burn  with 
indignation  at  the  wrong  which  man  inflicts  on  man, 
when  we  are  touched  with  the  sufferings  of  the  op 
pressed,  and  are  full  to  bursting  against  the  oppressor, 


Bryant's  Poems.  i5 

a  tone  of  gentleness  softens  our  wrath,  though  the  sense 
of  justice  grows  keener,  and  purposes  of  tender  and 
quiet  beneficence  become  living  convictions.  This  is 
the  peculiar  charm  of  his  philanthropy ;  it  is  suscep 
tible,  keen,  fresh,  and  ever  active  ;  it  is  unaccompanied 
by  bitter  or  revengeful  passion.  Nothing  to  detract 
from  its  perfect  purity  is  mingled  with  it,  and  nothing 
to  confound  it  with  mere  animal  impulse  or  physical 
sensibility.  It  is  a  love  as  immaculate  as  that  of  the 
angels,  at  the  same  time  full  of  humanity  and  kind 
liness.  Gentle  desires,  sweet  affections,  simple  tastes, 
patient  fortitude,  tranquil  recollections,  and  cheerful 
hope  are  the  impulses  that  he  moves.  To  these  only 
are  his  lofty  inspirations  addressed.  He  speaks  to 
them,  not  in  frigid  homilies  or  formal  tones  of  instruc 
tion,  but  by  interweaving  delightful  moral  associations 
with  all  the  objects  and  processes  of  the  material  world. 
Twilight  hues  lingering  after  the  bright  sun  has  set,  re 
call  the  memory  of  good  men  gone  ;  the  deep  slumber 
of  the  woodlands  is  an  emblem  of  inward  peace  ;  the 
perishing  flowers  of  Autumn  are  they  who  in  their 
youthful  beauty  died  ;  a  golden  sunlight  succeeding 
the  tempest  anticipates  the  day  when  the  noise  of  war 
shall  cease,  and  married  nations  dwell  in  harmony  ; 
the  unconscious  flow  of  the  rivulet,  changeless  amid 
change,  reminds  us  of  the  perpetual  onward  course  of 
time  ;  the  flight  of  the  lone  bird  in  the  illimitable  air 
tells  of  the  Power  that,  in  the  long  way  that  we  must 
tread  alone,  will  guide  our  steps  aright ;  and  the  un 
ceasing  vicissitudes  of  all  external  things  indicate  the 
hand  of  a  kind  Providence,  conducting  the  human 
race  through  successive  trials  to  the  scene  of  its  noblest 
triumphs. 

Surely  such  writings  are  those   to  which   we   most, 
often  and  fondly  recur.     We  come  to  regard  them  as 


1 6  Bryant's  Poems. 

friends,  ministering  in  all  seasons  of  affliction  and  joy 
to  our  spiritual  wants,  and  turning  us  by  -their  silent 
eloquence  to  whatever  is  holy  and  good.  Unlike  the 
more  dazzling  productions  of  genius,  which  are  read 
this  moment  and  forgotten  that,  or  which,  if  we  may  so 
express  it,  are  perused  by  a  flash  of  lightning,  to  be 
closed  the  instant  after  in  darkness,  they  make  them 
selves  our  closest  companions,  to  which  we  look  for 
instruction  and  solace.  We  turn  to  them  on  the  still 
Sabbath-days,  when  we  would  recover  our  moral  nature 
from  the  shocks  of  the  too  engrossing  world,  on  placid 
summer  evenings,  when  the  remembrance  of  far-off 
home  and  kindred  is  softest,  in  the  silent  watches  of 
the  night,  when,  the  world  shut  out,  eternal  things  are 
a  reality,  and  the  petty  cares  of  life  are  only  a  dream. 
And  then  if  trial  comes  upon  us  in  the  stern  struggles 
of  life,  they  administer  a  soothing  strength  ;  if  disap 
pointment  fills  the  heart  with  gall,  they  assuage  its  bit 
terness  ;  when  sickness  prostrates  energy,  they  recover 
the  drooping  spirit ;  and  when  death  creeps  slowly 
upon  the  sources  of  existence,  they  hover  around  us 
like  gentle  memories,  or  whisper  sweet  hopes  of  a  bet 
ter  world.  Would  that  all  gifted  men  could  learn  that 
to  survive  the  oblivion  that  seems  to  be  the  destiny  of 
most  human  things,  they  should  appeal  only  to  that 
which  is  imperishable  in  the  nature  of  man,  to  his  af 
fections  and  his  hopes. 

One  effect  of  Bryant's  faithful  observation,  of  which 
we  have  spoken,  is,  that  his  poems  are  strictly  American. 
They  are  American  in  their  subjects,  imagery,  and 
spirit.  Scarcely  any  other  than  one  born  in  this  coun 
try  can  appreciate  'all  their  merit,  so  strongly  marked 
are  they  by  the  peculiarities  of  our  natural  scenery,  our 
social  feelings,  and  our  national  convictions.  What 
the  author  has  seen,  or  what  has  been  wrought  in  his 


Bryants  Poems.  1 7 

own  mind,  he  has  written,  and  no  more.  His  skies 
are  not  brought  from  Italy,  nor  his  singing  birds  from 
the  tropics,  nor  his  forests  from  Germany  or  regions  be 
yond  the  pole.  He  is  not  indebted  to  the  patient  study 
of  books  so  much  as  to  a  calm  communion  with  out 
ward  things.  He  has  levied  no  contributions  on  the 
masters  of  foreign  literature,  nor  depended  upon  the 
locked-up  treasures  of  ancient  genius  for  the  materials 
of  thought  and  expression.  He  has  written  from  the 
movings  of  his  own  mind  ;  he  has  uttered  what  he  has 
felt  and  known  ;  he  has  described  things  around  him  in 
fitting  terms,  terms  suggested  by  familiar  contemplation, 
and  thus  his  writings  have  become  transcripts  of  exter 
nal  nature,  appreciated  by  his  countrymen  with  the 
readiness  and  ease  with  which  truth  is  ever  recognized. 

"Lone  lakes,  savannahs,  where  the  bison  roves,  . 
Rocks  rich  with  summer  garlands,  solemn  streams, 
Skies  where  the  desert  eagle  wheels  and  screams, 

Spring  bloom  and  autumn  blaze  of  boundless  groves," 

are  reflected  from  his  pages  as  the  surface  of  an  un 
ruffled  lake  reflects  the  surrounding  banks.  And  where 
could  he  find  aught  more  lovely  and  majestic,  or  better 
adapted  to  inspire  the  genius  of  descriptive  poetry  than 
in  this  land,  with  its  endless  variety  of  grove  and  water, 
with  its  deep  forests  brooding  in  eternal  silence  over  the 
slumbering  inland,  with  vast  lakes,  majestic  in  their  re 
pose,  sending  back  the  radiant  hues  of  the  sky  ;  where 
the  mountain  ridges  rise  to  prop  the  very  heavens;  where 
broad  streams  roll  their  mighty  tides  for  thousands  of 
miles  through  fertile  plains  ;  where  green  prairies  stretch 
like  oceans  arrested  in  their  mightiest  heavings,  and 
where  a  wildness  and  freshness  pervades  every  scene, 
that  dissociating  it  from  human  agency  suggests  the 
thought  of  a  loftier  indwelling  power  ? 


1 8  Bryant's  Poems. 

Nor  is  the  tone  of  these  poems  less  American  than 
the  imagery  or  the  themes.  They  breathe  the  spirit  of 
that  new  order  of  things  in  which  we  are  cast.  They 
are  fresh,  like  a  young  people  unwarped  by  the  super 
stitions  and  prejudices  of  age  ;  free,  like  a  nation  scorn 
ing  the  thought  of  bondage  ;  generous,  like  a  society 
whose  only  protection  is  mutual  sympathy  ;  and  bold 
and  vigorous,  like  a  land  pressing  onward  to  a  future  of 
glorious  enlargements.  The  noble  instincts  of  democ 
racy  prompt  and  animate  every  strain.  An  attachment 
to  liberty  stronger  than  the  desire  of  life,  an  immovable 
regard  for  human  rights,  a  confidence  in  humanity  that 
admits  of  no  misgivings,  and  a  rejoicing  hope  of  the 
future,  full  of  illumination  and  peace,  are  the  senti 
ments  that  they  everywhere  inspire.  They  sharpen  the 
sense  of  right,  they  infuse  a  love  of  the  true,  they 
expand  those  emotions  that  comprehend  in  their  plans 
of  benevolence  every  form  of  human  being. 

We  never  have  read  a  book  without  speculating  more 
or  less  as  to  the  character  of  its  author.  That  is  some 
thing,  we  admit,  with  which  the  public  have  nothing  to 
do,  and  yet  it  is  that  about  which  they  trouble  them 
selves  most.  If  we  could  gather  the  traits  of  this  book 
and  combine  them  in  some  way  into  a  living  person, 
we  should  fancy  a  man  to  whom  the  language  of 
Wordsworth  to  Milton  might  be  properly  addressed, 
"Thy  soul  is  like  a  star,  and  dwells  apart,"  one  for 
whom  the  grosser  world  had  no  allurements,  endowed 
with  kind  and  gentle  virtues,  modest,  unassuming,  mild, 
simple  in  taste,  elevated  in  sentiment,  dignified  in  de 
portment,  pure  in  life,  a  worshipper  of  the  beautiful 
everywhere  in  nature  and  in  art,  perpetually  attended 
by  noble  and  benevolent  aspirations,  familiar  as  a 
friend  with  the  best  spirits  of  the  past,  but  shrinking  in 
stinctively  from  contact  with  society,  unless  to  bear  re- 


Bryant's  Poems.  19 

proach  in  the  cause  of  truth  and  duty.  Whether  such 
a  portrait  would  be  true,  we  shall  not  ask  those  who 
know  him  to  say,  for  sure  we  are  that  the  beauty  and 
purity  which  abound  in  these  writings  could  only  pro 
ceed  from  a  mind  equally  beautiful  and  pure  ;  nay, 
more  so,  since  that  man  never  lived  who  could  give  ut 
terance  to  his  whole  soul. 

Yet  how  strange  is  it,  say  some,  that  a  mind  of  this 
sort  should  expend  its  energy  in  mere  political  discus 
sions  !  We  can  discover  nothing  in  it  either  strange  or 
lamentable.  No  doubt  it  would  be  more  congenial  to 
the  man's  feelings,  could  he  devote  himself  to  the  pros 
ecution  of  his  glorious  art.  Indeed,  we  hope  for  his 
own  sake,  for  the  sake  of  the  literature  of  the  country, 
that  he  may  be  permitted,  in  his  riper  age,  to  withdraw 
to  some  quiet  retreat,  where,  amid  the  calm  and  beauti 
ful  scenes  in  which  his  imagination  delights,  he  may 
meditate  and  construct  a  work  worthy  of  his  genius 
and  worthy  of  this  great  nation,  one  that  shall  grow  in 
fame  as  his  country  expands  in  power,  and  that  shall 
give  instruction  and  delight  to  the  multitudes  destined  in 
distant  years  to  cover  our  vast  inland  deserts,  and  make 
noisy  with  active  life  the  still  shores  of  the  Pacific. 

This  we  wish  :  but  we  do  not  regret  that  the  author's 
sympathy  with  the  cause  of  his  fellow-men  has  led  him 
to  mingle  in  the  stirring  warfare  of  politics  ;  that  with 
all  the  sensibility  of  genius,  he  can  yet  discipline  him 
self  to  meet  the  rebuffs  and  shocks  of  civil  conflict ; 
that  in  being  a  poet  he  has  not  ceased  to  be  a  citizen. 
If  there  were  in  political  life  anything  incompatible 
with  the  highest  virtue,  if  his  choice  of  it  had  at  any 
time  been  attended  by  degrading  compliances,  if  low 
motives  of  any  sort  had  impelled  his  exertions,  or  left 
a  single  trace  in  what  he  has  done,  if  aught  else  than 
loftv  self-sacrificinGf  devotion  had  led  him  to  so  uncon- 


2O  Bryant's  Poems. 


genial  a  vocation,  there  would  be  cause  for  regret  ;  not 
for  regret  merely — but  for  the  loud  and  stern  rebukes 
that  should  ever  fall  on  the  prostitution  of  noble  powers, 
which  are  the  property  of  mankind,  to  ignoble  objects. 
But  it  is  no  descent  for  the  best  of  us  to  be  concerned 
about  the  moral  and  social  condition  of  our  fellow- 
men.  One  of  the  admirers  of  Goethe  mentions  it  as 
a  proof  of  his  incomparable  genius,  that  when  the 
world  was  rent  by  the  grandest  dissensions,  when  revo 
lutions  of  tremendous  import  were  going  on,  when 
there  was  tempest  and  war  on  all  sides,  and  it  seemed 
as  if  a  thunderbolt  had  been  shot  among  all  social  ar 
rangements,  and  men  were  yet  in  doubt  whether  it  came 
downward  from  heaven  or  upward  from  hell,  he  all  the 
while  remained  unaffected,  penning  soft  madrigals  or 
singing  love  ditties  beneath  the  casement  of  his  mis 
tress.  We  see  nothing  in  this  to  admire.  If  it  were 
true,  we  should  regard  it  rather  as  a  piece  of  most  des 
picable  cowardice,  or  more  despicable  callousness. 
When  it  shall  become  disgraceful  to  feel  for  the  mil 
lions,  degraded  and  downtrodden,  when  it  shall  be  a 
laudable  thing  to  be  indifferent  to  the  moral  progress  of 
the  human  race,  when,  we  shall  have  occasion  to  grow 
ashamed  of  our  affections,  or  make  a  mockery  of  love, 
it  will  be  time  enough  to  put  forth  empty  lamentations 
over  men  of  genius  who  engage  in  political  strife.  But  it 
is  only  exposing  our  own  moral  defects  to  entertain  and 
utter  such  lamentations.  No  real  man  disdains  what 
deeply  interests  the  happiness  of  his  fellows. 

We  rejoice,  therefore,  that  Mr.  Bryant  should  lend 
his  high  aid  to  what  he  has  deemed  the  cause  of  jus 
tice  and  truth.  When  we  think  of  the  nobleness  of 
that  political  creed  which  from  earliest  manhood  he  has 
warmly  espoused,  of  the  energy  with  which  he  has  de 
fended  individual  and  equal  rights,  of  the  frequency 


Bryant's  Poems.  21 

and  fervor  with  which  he  has  appealed  in  all  his  dis 
cussions  to  the  best  feelings  of  men.  of  the  heroic  con 
sistency  with  which  he  has  asserted  truth  in  the  day  of 
its  obscurity,  bearing  up  manfully  against  persecutions 
from  which  less  sensitive  spirits  would  have  recoiled, 
repelling  with  dignified  and  honorable  scorn  the  at 
tacks  of  malignant  enemies,  yet,  in  the  midst  of  cal 
umny  and  abuse,  commiserating  the  moral  debasement 
from  which  they  sprang, — we  not  only  rejoice,  but  we 
thank  God  that  he  has  been  placed  just  where  he  has 
been  placed,  and  that  he  has  been  able,  like  Milton, 
to  overcome  the  soft  seductions  of  literary  indolence, 
to  battle  sternly  in  the  rude  lists  of  truth.  Long  after 
present  storms  shall  cease  to  rage,  many  a  young  mind 
made  strong  by  his  example  and  efforts  shall  rise  up  to 

renew  the 

11  Friendless  warfare,  lingering  long 
Through  weary  days  and  weary  years." 

Toward  the  close  of  Schiller's  noble  poem,  "The 
Artist,"  he  beautifully  represents  the  dignity  of  man  as 
committed  to  the  keeping  of  the  Poet,  and  he  exhorts 
him  earnestly  to  cherish  the  power  of  song  destined  to 
dispel  error  and  wrong  from  the  earth.  In  a  similar 
spirit  we  should  like  to  remind  the  Poet  of  America, 
that  the  silent  influence  of  his  writings,  in  purifying  and 
elevating  the  intellectual  and  moral  nature  of  his  coun 
trymen,  is  his  strongest  inducement  to  a  continuation 
of  his  labors.  If  he  is  faithful  to  his  trust,  as  a  quick- 
sighted  discerner  of  beauty,  of  goodness,  and  truth, 
when  his  body  shall  have  mouldered  to  nothingness  in 
the  grave,  his  name  will  still  be  fresh  and  warm  in  the 
memories  of  men.  Meanwhile,  let  the  living  cherish 
the  fame  of  one  whom  posterity  will  undoubtedly  re 
cognize  as  one  of  the  most  distinguished  ornaments  of 
his  country  and  his  time. 


JEREMY  BENTHAM  AND  LAW 
REFORM.* 

WRITER  in  the  Westminister  Review  re 
marks,  that  the  two  men  of  the  present  age 
who  have  most  strongly  influenced  the  minds 
of  their  countrymen,  are  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge 
and  Jeremy  Bentham.  Without  questioning  the  ac 
curacy  of  the  observation,  as  it  respects  Coleridge, 
we  think  there  can  be  little  doubt  of  the  truth  of 
so  much  of  it  as  applies  to  Bentham.  Whatever 
may  have  been  the  influence  of  the  former,  whose  re 
searches  were  mostly  in  the  region  of  abstract  thought, 
it  was  of  that  occult  and  delicate  nature  which  only  a 
few  are  apt  to  feel.  But  the  influence  of  Bentham, 
with  his  practical  cast  of  mind,  his  rugged  sense,  his 
bold  onsets  upon  cherished  modes  of  faith,  and  the 
immediate  interest  attached  to  his  inquiries,  was  more 
direct  and  obvious.  He  addressed  himself  to  questions 
connected  with  the  every-day  business  of  men  ;  and  if 
the  results  of  his  investigations  had  not  arrested  atten 
tion,  it  would  have  argued  either  a  singular  deficiency 
in  his  powers  of  thought,  or  a  no  less  singular  repul- 
siveness  in  his  manner  of  treating  his  subjects. 

Bentham,  however,  was  in  many  respects  peculiarly 

*  Theory  of  Legislation.     By  Jeremy  Bentham.      Boston  :   Weeks, 
Jordan  &  Co.,  1840. 

From  the  Democratic  Review,  Sept.,  1840. 


Law  Reform.  2  3 

fitted  for  the  task  he  undertook  ;  and  yet,  during  his  life 
time,  his  works,  though  not  without  reputation,  were 
hardly  estimated  at  their  real  value.  It  was  only  after 
they  had  founded  a  select  school  of  thinkers,  and  many 
accomplished  and  persevering  disciples  had  forced  them 
upon  the  consideration  of  the  British  Parliament,  that 
he  got  to  be  acknowledged  as  one  of  the  great  lumina 
ries  of  his  era.  His  place  as  a  father  of  law  reform,  as 
a  founder  of  legislative  science,  and  as  a  distinguished 
friend  of  the  social  advancement  of  the  human  race,  is 
now  generally  conceded. 

We  propose  briefly  to  consider  his  merits  in  these 
several  respects,  accompanying  our  comments  with  such 
personal  notices  only,  as  may  enable  the  reader  more 
easily  to  comprehend  the  man. 

First,  then,  a  few  words  of  Bentham  himself.  He 
was  born  in  London,  in  the  year  1747,  and  was  re 
markable  in  childhood  for  the  quickness  of  his  parts 
and  the  solidity  of  his  judgment.  At  three  years  of  age 
he  read  for  amusement  Rapin's  History  of  England  ;  at 
eight  was  a  skilful  performer  on  the  violin  ;  and  at 
thirteen  commenced  his  collegiate  studies  in  Oxford. 
At  this  early  period  even,  his  inquiring  and  conscientious 
turn  of  mind  manifested  itself;  for  being  asked  to  sign 
the  Thirty-Nine  Articles  of  the  established  church,  he 
did  so  reluctantly,  and  the  act  ever  afterward  proved  to 
him  an  occasion  of  deep  regret.  He  looked  upon  it 
as  deliberately  setting  his  seal  to  what  he  thought  to  be 
false,  as  a  species  of  self-degradation  which  disturbed 
the  clearness  of  his  moral  convictions  and  broke  the 
integrity  of  his  spirit.  His  father,  an  attorney  of  some 
note,  gave  him  the  opportunity  of  becoming  a  lawyer. 
Nor  did  he  fail  to  prosecute  his  studies  with  immense 
labor  and  research  ;  not,  however,  in  the  spirit  of  those 
who  ordinarily  pursue  that  profession,  but  with  the  dis- 


24  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

crimination  of  a  philosopher  and  the  zeal  of  a  philan 
thropist.  He  was  soon  disgusted  with  the  technical 
falsehood  he  found  pervading  every  branch  of  the  law, 
which,  in  connection  with  the  repugnance  excited  by  its 
indirectness,  inconsistencies,  unjust  arrangements  and 
barbarous  phraseology,  inspired  him  with  the  ambition 
of  devoting  his  life  to  its  reform. 

The  first  fruits  of  his  purpose  appeared  in  a  short  essay, 
called  a  Fragment  on  Government,  published  anony 
mously  in  1776,  as  a  criticism  of  an  episode  in  Black- 
stone's  Commentaries.  Written  with  singular  clearness 
and  vigor,  but  hypercritical  in  its  tone,  many  passages 
of  it  are  marked  by  astute  observation,  and  reasoning 
at  once  logical  and  profound.  The  estimation  in  which 
this  work  was  held  on  its  first  appearance,  both  as  a  lit 
erary  and  philosophical  performance,  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  it  was  successively  ascribed  to  Lord 
Camden,  Lord  Mansfield,  and  to  Mr.  Dunning,  all 
among  the  most  accomplished  lawyers  of  the  day.  It 
was  followed  by  the  publication,  two  years  afterward,  of 
a  review  of  the  "  Hard  Labor  Bill,"  with  observations 
relative  to  jurisprudence  in  general,  which  contained 
the  germ  of  several  sagacious  doctrines  unfolded  at 
length  in  later  works,  Then  came  the  "  Defence  of 
Usury,"  a  tract  of  remarkable  force,  and  one  of  the 
best  specimens  of  the  exhaustive  mode  of  reasoning 
ever  printed.  In  less  than  two  years,  the  "Introduction 
to  the  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation"  appeared, 
being  the  first  extended  and  methodical  exposition  of 
his  peculiar  notions  that  had  been  given.  This  work  gave 
him  a  place  at  once  among  thinkers.  The  originality 
of  its  arrangement,  together  with  the  boldness  of  its 
views  and  the  pertinacity  with  which  they  were  pressed, 
arrested  the  attention  of  leading  minds  of  that  period. 
Som?  few  hailed  the  new  teaching  as  the  harbinger  of 


and  Law  Reform.  25 

more  liberal  and  consistent  methods  of  treating  the  great 
questions  of  government  and  moral  science,  but  the 
greater  number  looked  upon  it  as  an  extravagant  re 
production  of  exploded  theories,  better  adapted  to  ex 
cite  merriment  than  to  awaken  inquiry,  or  to  become 
the  occasion  of  a  radical  and  comprehensive  reforma 
tion  of  the  laws.  Yet  the  book  worked  its  way.  One 
after  another,  distinguished  men  were  compelled  to  ad 
mit,  if  not  the  soundness  of  its  conclusions  in  de 
tail,  the  general  necessity  of  subjecting  law  to  a  thorough 
revision. 

Meanwhile,  the  author  himself,  apparently  content 
'to  allow  his  theories  to  bide  the  test  of  time,  busied 
himself  in  sending  forth  pamphlets  upon  the  various 
minor  and  collateral  branches  of  the  great  subject  to 
which  he  had  given  his  life.  Draughts  of  codes, 
essays  on  political  tactics,  on  colonial  emancipation, 
on  pauper  management,  on  parliamentary  reform,  on 
church  abuses,  on  the  art  of  instruction,  on  the  liberty 
of  the  press,  on  codification,  and  a  hundred  other  mat 
ters,  followed  each  other  in  rapid  succession.  But  a 
treatise  on  the  "  Rationale  of  Judicial  Evidence"  was 
the  largest  and  most  elaborate  of  the  works  then  pub 
lished.  It  was  filled  with  profound  thoughts  and  in 
structive  suggestions,  and  soon  became  the  foundation 
of  important  changes  in  the  law  of  procedure.  No  one 
can  read  it,  certainly,  without  acquiring  a  deep  convic 
tion  of  the  strength  and  astuteness  of  the  intellect  from 
which  it  sprung.  It  detected  the  absurdity  of  the  old 
practice  with  so  much  keenness,  exposed  it  with  so 
much  point  and  vivacity,  and  unfolded  a  better  scheme 
with  so  much  judgment  and  tact,  that  it  readily  obtained 
for  the  author  the  reputation  and  rank  of  a  master-mind. 

Three  of  Bentham's  treatises,  and  those  not  among 
the  least  important,  were  published  in  French,  and 


26  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

possessed  a  wide  continental  reputation  before  they  were 
generally  known  to  his  countrymen.  This  was  occa 
sioned  by  a  careless  habit  into  which,  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  life,  he  suffered  himself  to  fall.  Abandoning 
the  clear  and  nervous  style  of  his  earlier  works,  he  be 
gan  to  indulge  himself  in  loose,  capricious,  irregular, 
and  unintelligible  modes  of  expression.  His  thoughts 
were  no  more  written  out,  but  dotted  down,  sometimes 
in  mere  outline,  and,  at  others,  in  an  uncouth  and 
perplexing  jargon.  Catalogues,  synoptical  tables,  sum 
maries,  references,  brief  hints,  interspersed  with  long 
dissertations,  composed  the  bulk  of  his  manuscripts. 
Fortunately  for  him,  they  happened  to  fall  into  the 
hands  of  an  ardent  and  accomplished  disciple,  in  the 
person  of  Dumont,  a  citizen  of  Geneva,  for  some  time 
an  eloquent  preacher  at  St.  Petersburg,  but  who  had 
come  to  London  at  the  request  of  the  Lansdowne 
family.  Forming  the  acquaintance  of  Bentham,  there 
he  entered  at  once  with  zeal  and  activity  into  all  his 
speculations  and  plans.  Never  was  a  literary  friend 
ship  contracted  under  happier  auspices.  To  a  thorough 
appreciation  of  Bentham's  genius,  Dumont  united  pa 
tience  of  labor,  quickness  of  apprehension,  indefatig 
able  public  spirit,  and  a  felicitous  style  of  writing. 
"His  manners,"  says  Lord  Brougham,  "were  as  gen 
tle  as  they  were  polished  and  refined.  His  conversa 
tion  was  a  model  of  excellence  ;  it  was  truly  delightful. 
Abounding  in  the  most  agreeable  and  harmless  wit, 
fully  instinct  with  various  knowledge,  diversified  with 
anecdotes  of  rare  interest,  enriched  with  all  the  stores 
of  modern  literature,  seasoned  with  an  arch  and  racy 
humor,  and  occasionally  a  spice  of  mimicry,  or  rather 
of  acting,  but  subdued,  as  to  be  palatable  it  must  al 
ways  be,  and  giving  rather  the  portraiture  of  classes 
than  of  individuals,  marked  by  the  purest  taste,  en- 


and  Law  Reform.  27 

livened  by  a  gayety  of  disposition  still  unclouded, 
sweetened  by  a  temper  that  nothing  could  ruffle,  pre 
senting  especially  perhaps  the  single  instance  of  one 
distinguished  for  colloquial  powers,  never  occupying 
above  a  few  moments  at  a  time  of  any  one's  attention, 
and  never  ceasing  to  speak  that  all  his  hearers  did  not 
wish  him  to  go  on,  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  his  con 
versation  was  the  highest  which  the  refined  society  of 
London  and  Paris  afforded." 

To  this  man  was  committed  the  task  of  compiling, 
arranging,  condensing,  filling  out  and  translating  several 
of  the  best  of  Bentham's  manuscripts.  The  services 
which  he  rendered  in  this  way  were  an  invaluable  as 
sistance  to  his  master,  but  not  so  great  as  has  some 
times  been  represented.  Mr.  Macaulay,  in  one  of  his  re 
views,  says  that  "if  Mr.  Dumont  had  never  been  born, 
Mr.  Bentham  would  still  have  been  a  very  great  man. 
But  he  would  have  been  great  to  himself  alone.  The 
fertility  of  his  mind  would  have  resembled  the  fertility 
of  those  vast  American  wildernesses  in  which  blossoms 
and  decays  a  rich  but  unprofitable  vegetation,  '  where 
with  the  reaper  filled  not  his  hand,  neither  he  that 
bindeth  up  the  sheaves  his  bosom.'  It  would  have 
been  with  his'  discoveries  as  it  had  been  with  the 
'Century  of  Inventions.'  His  speculations  on  law 
would  have  been  of  no  more  practical  use  than  Lord 
Worcester's  speculations  on  steam-engines."  But  this 
is  an  exaggeration.  Much  as  Bentham  was  indebted 
to  Dumont,  it  was  only  for  a  small  part  of  his  fame. 
To  say  nothing  of  works  in  which  the  latter  had  no 
hand,  works  that  under  any  circumstances  would  have 
raised  the  author  to  eminence,  it  is  enough  to  remark 
that  Bentham  was  capable  of  the  task  which  another 
accomplished  for  him.  Dumont,  besides,  was  at  all 
times  solicitous  to  decline  the  merit  of  having  been  the 


28  Jeremy  Be  nth  am 

author  of  the  works  published  under  his  editorship. 
"  I  declare/'  said  he,  "I  have  no  share,  no  claim  of 
association  in  the  composition  of  these  works.  They 
belong  entirely  to  the  author,  and  to  him  alone."  Again 
he  observes:  "My  labor,  subaltern  in  its  kind,  has 
been  limited  to  details.  It  was  necessary  to  make  a 
choice  among  various  observations  on  the  same  sub 
ject  ;  to  suppress  repetitions  ;  to  throw  light  upon 
obscurities  ;  to  bring  together  all  that  appertained  to 
the  same  subject  ;  and  to  fill  up  those  gaps  which  in 
the  hurry  of  composition  the  author  had  left.  I  have 
had  more  to  retrench  than  to  add  ;  more  to  abridge 
than  to  expand.  A  profusion  of  riches  left  me  only 
the  care  of  economy."  This,  while  it  explains  the  na 
ture  of  Dumont's  labors,  acquits  Bentham  of  the  debt 
with  which  in  Mr.  Macaulay's  essay  he  is  charged. 

The  work  at  the  head  of  this  paper  presents,  in  a 
portable  form,  the  best  summary  of  his  doctrines  that 
has  been  published.  It  is  a  translation,  by  Richard 
Hildreth,  of  Boston,  from  the  French  edition  of  Du- 
mont,  originally  printed  in  Paris  in  1802,  with  a  sup 
plementary  essay  upon  "The  influence  of  time  and 
place  on  laws,"  which  does  not  appear  in  this  edition. 
If  any  person  would  obtain  a  correct  general  idea  of 
Bentham's  system,  without  wading  through  the  pon 
derous  and  often  repulsive  tomes  through  which  the 
details  of  it  are  scattered,  he  will  find  all  that  he  wishes 
in  this  succinct  yet  comprehensive  digest  of  Dumont. 

Now,  what  was"  this  system  ?  As  the  fairest,  as  well 
as  completest  method  of  stating  it,  we  shall  confine  our 
selves,  as  near  as  may  be,  to  the  expressions  of  his  own 
treatises.  His  fundamental  principle  is,  that  "general 
utility,"  sometimes  designated  as  "the  greatest  good  of 
the  greatest  number,"  is  the  only  legitimate  foundation 
of  legislative  science.  This  utility  is  exclusive  of  every 


and  Law  Reform.  29 

other  principle,  and  is  to  be  faithfully  applied  to  all 
cases  of  legislation  by  the  most  rigid  processes  of  moral 
arithmetic.  Nature  has  placed  man  under  the  dominion 
of  two  motives,  and  no  more.  His  only  object  in  life 
is  to  seek  pleasure  and  avoid  pain,  even  when  he  ima 
gines  himself  most  free  from  the  empire  of  those  senti 
ments.  Utility,  therefore,  is  the  property  or  tendency  of 
a  thing  to  procure  some  pleasure  or  prevent  some  pain. 
Everything,  therefore,  is  conformable  to  the  utility 
or  the  interest  of  a  community,  which  tends  to  aug 
ment  the  sum  of  the  happiness  of  the  individuals  of 
which  it  is  composed.  Virtue  is  to  be  esteemed  by  the 
disciple  of  the  principle  of  utility  as  a  good,  only  be 
cause  of  the  pleasure  that  it  produces  ;  and  vice  is  to  be 
regarded  as  an  evil,  only  on  account  of  the  pains  which 
result  from  it.  If  "one  finds,  in  the  ordinary  lists  of 
virtue,  an  action  from  which  there  follows  more  pain 
than  pleasure,  it  is  to  be  instantly  classified  among  the 
number  of  vices  ;  and  so,  on  the  other  hand,  if  there  is 
found  in  the  common  lists  of  offences  some  indifferent 
action,  some  innocent  pleasure,  you  must  not  hesitate 
to  transport  this  pretended  offence  into  the  class  of  law 
ful  actions. 

But  to  arrive  at  a  correct  notion  of  utility,  in  any 
given  case,  it  is  necessary  to  have  a  full  and  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  different  kinds  of  pleasures  and  pains. 
The  variety  of  sensations  which  we  momentarily  ex 
perience  must  be  minutely  analyzed,  dividing  the  sim 
ple  from  the  complex,  and  arranging  the  whole  in 
catalogues,  which  will  assist  the  memory  while  it  ren 
ders  the  judgment  more  precise.  Not  only  the  num 
ber,  but  the  value  or  power  of  pleasures  and  pains,  both 
as  they  relate  to  individuals  and  as  they  relate  to  com 
munities,  must  be  learned  ;  and  this  value  we  shall 
find  to  depend  upon  their  intensity,  their  duration, 


30  Jeremy  Bentham 

their  certainty,  their  proximity,  their  productiveness, 
their  purity,  and  their  extent.  Inasmuch,  however,  as 
all  causes  of  pleasure  do  not  give  the  same  pleasure  to 
all  persons,  nor  all  causes  of  pain  produce  the  same 
pain,  that  difference  in  human  sensibility  from  which 
that  difference  of  pleasure  and  pain  proceeds  must  also 
be  investigated.  This  difference  of  sensibility  is  either 
in  degree  or  kind  :  in  degree,  when  the  impression  of 
a  given  cause  upon  many  individuals  is  uniform  but 
unequal ;  in  kind,  when  the  same  cause  produces 
opposite  sensations  in  different  individuals  ;  and  in 
both  cases  turns  primarily  upon  temperament,  health, 
strength,  corporeal  imperfections,  knowledge,  intel 
lectual  faculties,  firmness  of  soul,  perseverance,  the  bent 
of  inclination,  notions  of  honor,  notions  of  religion, 
sentiments  of  sympathy,  antipathies,  disorder  of  mind, 
and  pecuniary  circumstances. 

Possessed  of  a  knowledge  of  the  true  nature  of  the 
various  kinds  of  pleasures  and  pains,  we  may  then  take 
up  the  analysis  or  political  good  and  evil,  and  of  the 
manner  in  which  they  are  diffused  through  society.  It 
is  with  government  as  with  medicine,  that  its  main 
business  is  a  choice  of  evils.  Law,  being  an  infraction 
of  liberty,  is  an  evil  ;  and  hence  the  legislator,  in  de 
vising  any  scheme,  is  to  consider,  first,  whether  the 
acts  which  he  .undertakes  to  prevent  are  really  evils ; 
and  secondly,  whether,  if  evils,  they  are  greater  evils 
than  the  means  he  employs  to  suppress  them  would  be. 
In  other  language,  is  the  evil  of  the  disease  or  the  evil 
of  the  remedy  the  greater  ?  He  is  to  remember  that 
evil  seldom  comes  alone,  but  takes  different  forms,  and 
spreads  on  every  side  as  from  a  centre.  It  first  affects 
the  persons  immediately  concerned  in  it,  and  then,  by 
arousing  the  idea  of  danger  and  alarm,  affects  the  whole 
community.  For  the  protection  and  welfare  of  society, 


and  Law  Reform.  31 

therefore,  certain  acts  are  to  be  erected  into  offences,  by 
which  is  meant  that  they  deserve  punishment.  But 
some  evil  acts  are  not  of  this  sort,  and  had  better  be  left 
to  the  punishments  attached  to  them  by  the  natural  or 
social  sanctions,  than  included  in  the  number  of  those 
which  are  touched  by  the  political  sanctions.  In 
making  the  discrimination,  between  those  which  be 
long  to  the  domain  of  politics  and  those  which  belong 
to  morals  exclusively,  resort  must  be  had  to  the  same 
great  doctrine  of  utility,  which  accompanies  the  whole 
inquiry. 

This  is  the  sum  in  brief  of  Bentham's  theory.  The 
first  thing  that  it  occurs  to  us  to  say  of  it  is,  that  Ben- 
tham  does  not  seem  to  have  had  a  very  deep  pene 
tration  into  the  metaphysics  of  that  part  of  it  relating  to 
morals.  He  appears  to  have  taken  his  moral  doctrine 
for  granted,  without  investigating  the  grounds  of  it,  and 
without  giving  due  weight  to  the  researches  of  other 
philosophers.  More  of  a  thinker  than  a  reader,  he  fell 
into  a  contemptuous  mode  of  treating  the  inquiries  of 
older  speculators.  Indeed,  he  regards  the  results  of 
their  speculations  (those,  we  mean,  which  respect  a 
moral  sense,  and  the  grounds  of.  moral  obligation)  as 
the  mere  expressions  of  their  individual  prejudices  and 
sentiments.  They  were  excuses  for  dogmatizing,  indi 
rect  modes  of  asserting  peculiar  biases,  or  adroit  con 
trivances  to  avoid  the  appeal  to  anything  like  an  external 
standard  of  right  and  wrong.  He  represented  them  as 
quite  unintelligible,  or  intelligible  only  so  far  as  they  in 
clined  toward  his  own  favorite  doctrine.  In  no  instance 
does  he  make  a  full  and  candid  statement  of  what  they 
are,  or  assign  in  detail  the  reasons  why  they  are  re 
jected.  He  simply  enumerates  them  under  one  name 
or  another,  and  then,  by  a  fell  stroke  of  the  pen, 
sweeps  them  all  from  the  board,  as  unworthy  of  further 


32  Jeremy  Bentham 

notice.  Nor  is  he  any  more  explicit  in  establishing  the 
theory  which  he  sets  up  in  their  place.  He  asserts  it 
boldly,  frequently,  without  compromise,  but  he  never 
demonstrates  it,  scarcely  indeed  makes  an  attempt 
to  demonstrate  it,  and  his  readers  must  receive  it  on  his 
dictum,  or  seek  elsewhere  for  an  exposition. 

This  logic,  summary  as  it  is,  might  be  retorted  upon 
Bentham.  If  his  own  doctrine  were  dismissed  without 
examination,  neither  he  nor  his  disciples  could  justly 
complain  of  discourtesy.  But  the  moral  question,  ly 
ing  as  it  does  at  the  foundation  of  the  whole  subject, 
is  too  important  to  be  passed  over  so  cavalierly.  It 
must  be  looked  into  with  no  loose  nor  divided  attention, 
if  we  would  avoid  the  worst  errors  into  which  Bentham 
himself  fell — to  wit,  a  confusion  of  several  palpable 
and  necessary  distinctions,  a  disregard  of  some  of  the 
most  important  facts  of  the  human  constitution,  and  a 
too  rigid  and  sometimes  fantastic  application  of  the  main 
principle. 

The  truth  is,  that  Bentham  was  in  many  respects 
qualified  as  we  have  said,  but  in  others  disqualified,  for 
the  career  he  had  chosen.  He  was  fitted  for  it,  by  the 
peculiar  practical  structure  of  his  intellect,  by  his  ques 
tioning  spirit,  by  his  subtilty  of  scent,  if  we  may  call  it 
so,  and  by  his  independence  of  judgment.  Law  involved 
details  which  only  the  most  patient  and  practical  mind 
could  endure  to  investigate  :  it  was  surrounded  by  so 
many  dear  and  venerable  associations,  that  no  one 
who  deferred  to  ancient  wisdom  would  dare  to  attack 
its  outworks,  much  less  the  citadel ;  the  spirit  of  injus 
tice  lurking  through  it,  and  covered  by  innumerable 
subtile  and  plausible  pretexts,  could  only  be  detected- 
by  one  possessing  the  quickest  sense  of  wrong  ;  and  so 
thoroughly  had  it  been  interwoven  with  the  habits  and 
notions  of  society,  that  to  make  an  onslaught  upon  its 


and  Law  Reform.  33 

weaknesses  was  to  sever  the  assailant  almost  from  all 
the  sympathies  of  his  fellows.  Bentham  was  adapted  to 
meet  these  difficulties  at  every  point.  He  was  inquisi 
tive,  persevering,  and  fearless.  He  had  the  sagacity  to 
perceive  defects,  the  boldness  to  suggest  remedies,  and 
the  fortitude  to  expose  the  one  and  defend  the  other,  in 
spite  of  opposition.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  these  very 
excellencies  led  him  into  an  opposite  excess.  His  readi 
ness  to  question  degenerated  into  skepticism,  his  ability 
to  reconstruct  begat  a  vain  desire  of  superfluous  and 
fantastic  theorizing,  and  his  firmness  and  self-reliance 
betrayed  itself  into  a  contemptuous  disregard  of  all  for 
mer  opinions.  This  last  disposition  in  fact  grew  into  a 
besefting  sin.  From  doubting  the  conclusion  of  others, 
he  soon  came  to  despise  their  capacities.  He  took 
nothing  for  granted  :  he  proved  by  formal  demonstra 
tions  the  simplest  truisms  ;  and  he  addressed  his  read 
ers  as  a  pedagogue  would  his  pupils,  as  so  many  abece 
darians. 

Bentham's  moral  theory  involves  two  questions,  at 
least,  that  aie  quite  distinct  :  first,  are  pleasure  and  pain 
the  sole  governing  motives  of  men  ? — and  secondly,  is 
the  tendency  of  an  act  to  produce  the  greatest  amount 
of  happiness  the  only  reason  why  it  is  binding  upon  the 
conscience  ? 

We  take  issue  with  him  on  each  of  these  points. 
His  first  proposition,  that  pleasure  and  pain  are  the  sole 
motives  of  men,  revives  the  old  bone  of  metaphysics, 
as  to  the  disinterestedness  of  human  virtue.  The  doc 
trine  of  many  philosophers,  and,  we  believe,  of  most 
men  of  the  world,  is,  that  whatever  a  man  does  has  re 
lation  to  his  own  good  :  if  he  is  virtuous,  it  is  because  it 
is  more  agreeable  for  him  to  be  so  than  otherwise  ;  and 
if  he  is  vicious,  it  is  because  he  finds  his  greatest  pleasure 
in  vice.  All  human  conduct  is  only  a  balancing  of  in- 


34  yeremy  Bentham 

terest,  either  immediate  or  remote  ;  and  benevolence  it 
self,  or  what  is  sometimes  called  a  generous  sacrifice,  is 
a  mere  prudential  calculation  as  to  the  pleasure  and 
pain  involved  in  the  act.  When  a  missionary,  for  ex 
ample,  leaves  the  comforts  of  a  civilized  home  for  the 
miseries  of  a  savage  wilderness,  he  pursues  his  pleas 
ure  merely  ;  he  is  driven  by  his  fear  of  remorse  and  of 
hell  on  one  side,  to  brave  the  perils  of  want  and  death 
on  the  other,  and  in  this  way  selects  simply  the  more 
agreeable  alternative.  In  his  view,  there  is  a  higher 
pleasure  in  preaching  to  the  savages,  than  in  sharing  the 
luxuries  of  refined  society.  In  preferring  the  former, 
he  acts  upon  the  same  principle  of  self-love  as  the 
chimney-sweeper  would  in  giving  up  his  sooty  rags  for 
the  purple  and  fine  linen  of  a  prince.  He  adds  to  the 
number  of  his  agreeabte  experiences,  and  on  that  ac 
count,  and  on  that  account  alone,  he  changes  one 
condition  for  another. 

Now,  in  reply  to  such  reasoning,  we  shall  begin  by 
admitting  that  a  lofty  pleasure  attends  the  exercise  of 
any  form  of  benevolence  ;  but  is  that  pleasure — and 
here  is  the  point — is  that  pleasure  the  immediate  object 
of  the  benevolence?  Bishop  Butler,*  the  profoun^est 
and  acutest  of  the  English  metaphysicians,  set  this 
matter  at  rest,  we  think,  when  he  first  urged  this  dis 
tinction,  viz.,  that  the  direct  object  of  any  human 
affection  is  altogether  distinct  from  the  pleasure  which 
may  accompany  its  exercise.  Though  virtue  is  pleasant 
and  vice  painful,  the  object  of  the  mind  in  pursuing  a 
virtuous  or  vicious  course,  is  not  the  pleasure  or  pain 
that  attends  it,  but  something  entirely  different,  such 
as  the  conferring  a  benefit  or  inflicting  an  injury.  The 
motive,  therefore,  may  be  separated  from  all  consider- 

*  See  his  celebrated  Sermons  on  Human  Nature,  etc. 


and  Law  Reform.  35 

ations  of  a  self-regarding  nature,  although  the  result 
of  the  act  when  performed,  or  the  performance  of  it 
in  jtself,  yields  the  highest  degree  of  satisfaction.  A 
mother,  who  devotes  herself  during  long  and  sleepless 
nights  to  the  care  of  a  suffering  child,  has  a  certain 
sort  of  pleasure  in  the  midst  of  all  her  painful  vigils  :  it 
is  more  agreeable  to  discharge  the  anxious  duty  than  it 
would  be  to  leave  it  undone,  or  to  abandon  the  child  to 
alien  cares.  Her  affections,  in  the  one  case,  are  grati 
fied  and  her  conscience  set  at  rest  ;  while  in  the  other 
case  her  affections  would  be  wrung  and  her  conscience 
made  to  bite.  But  is  her  own  satisfaction  the  motive  of 
her  conduct,  and  not  the  good  of  her  offspring,  con 
sidered  apart  from  her  own  satisfaction  ?  Is  she  inter 
ested  mainly  in  her  own  state  of  body  or  mind,  or  in 
that  of  the  child  ?  Is  she  seeking  her.  own  relief,  or 
another's?  Does  she  so  much  as  think  of  her  own 
state,  present  or  prospective  ?  If  the  former,  then 
Bentham  is  right  ;  but  if  the  latter,  then  he  is  wrong. 
He  is  wrong,  because  we  see  clearly  that  there  may  be 
actions  which  are  not  self-regarding,  which  are  disin 
terested,  which  contemplate  ends  outside  of  ourselves, 
and  which  cannot  therefore  be  reduced  to  a  calculation 
of  our  own  pleasure  or  pain. 

Pleasure  or  pain,  we  repeat,  may  be  the  accompani 
ment  or  the  result  of  an  action  without  being  the  object 
for  which  that  action  is  performed.  It  gives  a  hungry 
man  pleasure  to  relieve  his  hunger,  and  yet  his  motive 
in  eating  may  be,  not  the  pleasure,  but  the  support  of 
his  animal  powers.  It  gives  a  good  man  pleasure  to 
succor  the  distressed,  but  it  is  the  relief  he  gives  others, 
not  the  pleasure  reflected  back  upon  himself,  by  which 
he  is  moved.  Moreover,  if  that  pleasure  were  con 
sciously  or  confessedly  his  object,  the  act  would  lose 
its  merit  as  a  virtuous  act.  It  is  virtuous  to  tell  the 


36  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

truth,  but  to  tell  the  truth,  not  because  it  is  truth,  but 
because  it  will  bring  us  some  advantage,  is  not  vir 
tuous.  It  is  virtuous  not  to  steal,  if  we  refrain  from 
stealing  out  of  respect  to  the  rights  of  others  ;  but  it  is 
not  virtuous  to  be  honest  from  a  fear  of  detection  and 
the  consequent  exposure.  That  would  be  but  a  piece 
of  prudent  selfishness,  such  as  any  dog  might  exhibit 
who  had  been  once  whipped  for  taking  the  wrong  bone. 
So  a  woman  who  is  chaste,  because  she  calculates  that 
it  is  more  reputable  to  be  so  than  to  be  otherwise — 
whose  chastity  is  not  -a  deep  inward  preference  for  a 
pure  life,  but  a  calculation — may  be  irreproachable,  but 
she  is  certainly  not  admirable.  Or,  if  John  Howard 
had  avowed  that  his  predominant  aim,  in  his  protracted 
labors  to  reform  the  prisons  of  Europe,  was  to  procure 
himself  a  subtle  and  exquisite  kind  of  satisfaction, 
would  he  have  won  the  fame  he  has  as  a  philanthro 
pist  ? 

Or,  the  question,  raised  by  the  selfish  school  may  be 
put  in  another  shape,  which  is  this  :  whether  a  man 
can  propose  to  himself  any  other  end  of  action  than 
his  own  enjoyment?  and  that  is,  in  reality,  to  ask 
whether  a  man  is  a  man  or  only  an  animal.  Animal 
or  sentient  life  does  depend  upon  the  balance  of  pain 
and  pleasure.  No  sentient  being  could  exist  except  on 
the  condition  of  an  equilibration  of  pain  and  pleasure  ; 
for  if  either  of  them  were  in  excess,  it  would  perish. 
If  the  relation  between  the  medium  in  which  we  exist 
and  our  sensitive  nerves  were  such  that  pain  alone  re 
sulted,  life  would  no  longer  be  life,  but  torture  ;  we 
should  speedily  die  of  it,  as  happens  often  in  cases  of 
excessive  nervous  depression.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
our  sensations  were  pleasurable  only  (besides  having 
no  motives  for  action),  we  should  die  of  ecstasy  or  in 
toxication,  as  fishes  do  in  the  air,  or  insects  in  a  jar  of 


and  Law  Reform.  37 

oxygen,  or  men  who  inhale  too  much  ether  or  nitrous 
oxyde  gas.  It  is,  then,  on  the  balance  of  pain  and 
pleasure,  or  on  an  equal  liability  to  each,  that  the 
operations  of  the  animal  functions  become  at  all  pos 
sible.  But  human  or  moral  life  is  different,  and  it  is 
conditional,  not  upon  the  balance  of  pain  and  pleasure, 
but  upon  the  balance  of  good  and  evil, — that  is,  upon 
the  freedom  of  the  human  being  to  choose  the  one  or 
the  other,  and  to  impose  that  choice  upon  his  Will,  as  a 
principle  of  conduct.  The  animal  is  the  subject  of  his 
nature,  and  must  act  according  to  his  inclinations  or 
aversions — /.  <?.,  according  to  his  pleasure  or  pain  ;  but 
man  is  the  master  of  his  nature,  and  may  act  according 
to  the  perceptions  of  his  Reason  and  the  dictates  of  his 
Conscience,  toward  an  end  which  transcends  his  in 
clinations  or  aversions.  Not  being  simply  animal,  but 
spiritual,  he  is  lifted  out  of  the  animal  sphere  of  pleasure 
and  pain  into  the  moral  sphere  of  good  and  evil — i.  e., 
into  a  sphere  in  which  he  deliberates,  or  legislates  for 
himself  according  to  general  maxims,  and  not  indi 
vidual  ends.  Now,  it  is  the  "flesh"  and  the  "spirit," 
as  the  Scriptures  say — the  "old  man"  and  the  "new 
man,"  the  "members,"  and  the  "law  written  on  the 
heart,"  coming  into  play  and  antagonism, — while  the 
antagonism  is  not  exclusive  of  either  element,  neither 
of  good  nor  of  evil, — which  together  constitute  the  field 
of  human  morality.  If  man  were  all  evil,  he  might  be 
tiger  or  fiend — if  he  were  all  good,  he  might  be  dove  or 
angel ;  but  not  man,  which  he  is,  solely  because  both 
good  and  evil. 

This  again  brings  us  to  the  second  point  in  Ben- 
tham's  assumption,  which  is,  that  an  act  is  obligatory, 
morally,  on  the  sole  ground  of  its  tendency  to  produce 
the  happiness  either  of  the  agent  himself  or  of  other 
similar  agents.  Is  that  true  ?  and  if  so,  how  do  we 


33  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

know  it  ?  Firstly,  is  there  such  a  stated  antecedence 
and  sequence  in  human  actions,  that  the  idea  of  pro 
ducing  happiness  is  invariably  followed  by  the  sense  of 
obligation  ?  We  venture  to  answer  that  not  a  soul  in 
the  world  is  conscious  of  this  alleged  connection. 
When  the  production  of  happiness  is  proposed  to  us,  it 
strikes  us  always  as  something  desirable,  but  it  does  not 
always  strike  us  as  something  obligatory.  Parents, 
teachers,  orators,  writers,  when  they  want  to  awaken 
moral  conviction,  appeal  directly  to  the  mind  without 
a  preliminary  descant  upon  the  production  of  happiness. 
And  the  great  practical  moralists,  the  Confutses,  the 
Moseses,  the  Christs,  speak  invariably  in  an  imperative, 
not  a  calculating  mood,  —  "  Do  as  you  would  be  done 
by,"  "  Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  "Thou  shalt  not  bear  false 
witness,"  "  Do  not  commit  adultery,"  "  Love  the  Lord 
thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  thy  fellow  as  thyself,  "- 
all  which  commands  imply  in  man  a  capacity  to 
conceive  duty  immediately,  without  going  through 
a  process  of  arithmetic  :  like  this  for  instance,  so  much 
pleasure  on  one  side,  so  much  pain  on  the  other ;  ergo, 
so  much  obligation  on  one  side,  and  none  on  the  other. 
Or,  secondly,  Bentham's  assumption  may  mean  that 
the  idea  of  right  and  wrong,  and  the  idea  of  producing 
happiness,  are  coextensive  with  each  other — i.  e.,  inter 
changeable  ;  in  which  case,  he  is  bound  to  tell  us  which 
is  the  cause  and  which  the  effect.  Does  virtue  pro 
duce  happiness,  or  happiness  virtue  ?  He  has  nowhere 
vouchsafed  the  answer.  The  general  impression,  the 
instinctive  judgment,  is,  that  they  are  not  identical ;  we 
have  a  distinct  idea  of  each,  and,  in  all  practical 
cases,  assume  a  difference.  It  is  agreeable  and  useful 
to  me  to  wash  my  body  daily  in  cold  water,  but  it  is  not 
obligatory  on  me  to  do  so  ;  I  teach  my  children  to 
ride,  skate,  and  swim,  because  these  are  pleasant  and 


and  Law  Reform.  39 

healthful  exercises ;  but  I  teach  them  to  be  honest  and 
truthful  for  quite  other  reasons.  I  throw  open  my 
orchards  certain  days  in  summer  to  all  the  neighboring 
poor  to  eat  their  fill  of  fruit,  because  I  take  delight  in 
their  delight  ;  but  I  urge  them  to  be  upright,  and 
sober,  and  chaste  on  other  grounds  than  either  my 
pleasure  or  theirs.  As  therefore  actions,  in  fact, 
produce  happiness,  which  have  no  moral  character, 
any  more  than  the  relief  administered  by  a  bootjack 
or  the  gambols  of  a  kitten. 

Or,  again,  thirdly,  Bentham's  assumption  means 
that  utility,  or  the  production  of  happiness  is  the  test, 
measure,  criterion,  standard,  of  right  and  wrong 
(which  we  have  no  doubt  is  his  real  understanding  of 
the  subject).  But  here  again  we  cannot  go  with  him, 
for  a  threefold  reason.  First,  that  all  the  consequences 
of  an  act  cannot  be  reached,  i.  e.,  adequately  known, 
unless  we  suppose  ourselves  capable  of  following 
them  out,  as  they  go  sounding  on  through  all  the 
realms  of  being,  through  infinite  spaces  and  infinite 
times,  to  the  last  syllable  of  recorded  experience.  Sec 
ondly,  that  if  we  limit  our  view  to  the  mere  tendency 
of  acts  to  produce  consequences,  the  standard  becomes 
too  fluctuating.  Men's  opinions  differ  in  nothing  more 
than  in  their  estimates  of  what  is  expedient,  as  they 
happen  to  study  immediate  or  remoter  tendencies,  such 
as  affect  this  or  that  interest,  this  or  that  intellectual 
taste,  this  or  that  moral  affection,  this  or  that  social  in 
stitution  or  convention,  this  or  that  religious  doctrine, 
natural  or  revealed.  What,  indeed,  are  all  the  debates 
of  Parliaments,  the  wranglings  of  newspapers,  the  con 
flicts  of  private  opinion,  but  efforts  to  determine  the 
very  "  utility"  which  is  offered  us  as  a  standard  of  recti 
tude  and  judgment  ?  But,  thirdly,  we  say  that  this 
alleged  standard  confounds  mere  error  or  mistake  with 


40  Jeremy  BcntJiam 

crime.  Consequences  of  the  most  deleterious  kind 
are  produced  by  momentary  infirmities  of  temper,  or 
hastiness  of  decision,  as  well  as  by  deliberate  wicked 
ness.  A  general  may  sacrifice  his  army  at  a  critical 
moment,  when  the  very  liberties  of  his  country  depend 
upon  a  battle  about  to  be  fought,  through  impetuosity 
or  procrastination,  or  the  miscarriage  of  a  despatch,  or 
the  lie  of  a  scout ;  or,  he  may  sacrifice  it  through  over 
indulgence  in  wine,  through  secret  complicity  with  the 
enemy ;  and  in  both  cases  the  consequences  will  be  the 
same  :  but  how  different  our  estimate  of  his  guilt  !  We 
should  denounce  him  as  an  imbecile  in  one  case,  but 
as  a  criminal  in  the  other  ;  we  should  degrade  him  in 
one,  but  shoot  him  in  the  other:  but  why  the  distinction 
estimated  by  the  results  ?  A  mother  of  a  family,  by  a 
constant  peevishness  and  irritability  will  produce  more 
unhappiness  to  herself,  her  children,  and  her  friends, 
than  she  would  by  an  occasional  secret  infidelity ;  and 
yet  the  one  fault  we  merely  regret,  while  the  other  we 
brand  as  infamous.  Why  so,  on  the  calculation  of  con 
sequences  ?  Because  something  more  than  "conse 
quences  "  enters  into  our  judgment  of  the  act,  which  is 
what  the  utilitarians  precisely  leave  out,  the  moral  dis 
position,  or  the  state  of  the  Will. 

This  fatal  defect  of  the  utilitarian  standard  the  relig- 
ous  moralists  have  seen  :  they  have  seen  that  there  could 
be,  for  a  moral  being  responsible  for  his  acts,  no  standard 
outside  of  the  human  consciousness  ;  and  they  have 
erected  intention  into  a  measure  of  merit  and  demerit. 
But  intention  can  relate  only  to  the  individual's  estimate 
of  his  own  end,  and  it  fails  of  the  universality  which  is 
implied  in  any  common  standard  of  action.  A  crite 
rion  ought  to  be  valid  for  all  judgments.  Besides,  this 
doctrine  of  intention  is  apt  to  degenerate  into  a  mere 
casuistry,  such  as  prevailed  in  the  Jesuitical  schools, 


and  Law  Reform.  41 

that  Pascal  castigated  with  -immortal  wit  and  severity. 
The  end  is  soon  lugged  in  to  justify  the  means,  and 
then  no  abomination  so  gross  or  so  subtle  that  it  may 
not  walk  abroad  in  a  shining  panoply  of  good  pur 
poses.  What  is  wanted  is,  some  principle  of  universal 
application,  which  the  Reason  may  at  once  discern  and 
impose  as  an  imperative  law  upon  the  Will. 

The  following  circumstances,  we  think,  will  be  ad 
mitted  to  be  facts  :  ist.  That  all  rational  beings  stand 
in  various  relations  to  each  other,  such  as  the  relation 
of  parent  to  child,  of  man  to  woman,  of  brother  to 
brother,  of  man  to  man,  etc.  2d.  That  as  soon  as 
these  relations  are  apprehended  by  the  mind,  there 
springs  up  in  it  spontaneously  a  conviction  that  certain 
dispositions  are  proper,  i.  e.,  ought  to  be  manifested  to 
ward  the  beings  to  whom  we  are  thus  related.  A  man, 
for  instance,  who  is  a  free  rational  Person,  recognizing 
in  another  being  the  same  freedom  and  rationality,  per 
ceives  intuitively  that  he  too  is  a  Person,  who  is  to  be 
treated  as  a  person, — *'.  e.y  always  as  an  end,  and  never  as 
a  means.  Reciprocally,  they  owe  to  each  other  respect  ; 
and  that  respect  generalized,  forms  the  sentiment  of  uni 
versal  human  justice,  which  is  the  basis  of  all  morals. 

This  conviction,  then,  having  a  real  existence,  is  ca 
pable  of  becoming  a  motive,  and  a  motive  acting  inde 
pendently  of  all  notions  of  pain  or  pleasure.  Whoever 
has  experienced  how  often  it  sets  itself  in  opposition  to  his 
most  cherished  notions  of  pleasure,  will  testify  to  the 
power  of  its  workings.  It  acts  as  the  great  antagonist  of 
the  inferior  forces  of  the  soul.  An  intense  and  anxious 
struggle  is  incessantly  waged  between  it  and  the  swarms 
of  our  selfish  appetites.  If  it  be  allowed  to  be  over 
come,  it  is  turned  into  an  avenging  monitor,  shooting 
arrows  of  keen  remorse  ;  but  when  it  conquers,  it  is 
the  angel  of  peace,  shedding  its  soft  influences  over  and 


42  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

irradiating  by  its  genial  smiles  the  depths  of  the  inmost 
soul.  There  are  now,  and  there  have  been  in  all  ages  of 
the  world,  men  in  whom  the  sentiment  of  benevolence, 
the  love  of  friends,  devotion  to  country,  in  other  words, 
of  fidelity  to  humanity,  have  been  never-failing  springs 
of  action,  invincible  by  all  the  motives  of  self-interest 
which  could  be  brought  to  bear  against  them  ;  men 
who  in  the  accomplishment  of  a  lofty  purpose  would 
pass  days  and  nights  of  pain  and  labor,  who  would  sac 
rifice  without  regret  the  most  cherished  gratifications,  to 
bring  aid  to  the  needy,  or  balm  to  the  distressed  ;  men 
who  would  recoil  from  the  thought  of  meanness  or 
wrong  with  as  much  quickness  as  the  instinct  of  a  pure 
woman  shrinks  from  the  approach  of  contamination  ; 
men  who  in  a  contest  for  principle  would  spurn  the 
suggestions  of  policy  with  an  instant  scorn,  and  who 
would  relinquish  property,  comforts,  rank,  children, 
and  friends  with  joyful  alacrity,  before  they  would  sur 
render  one  jot  of  their  faith  or  compromise  in  a  single 
point  the  integrity  of  their  aims.  There  are  now,  and 
there  have  been  in  all  ages  of  the  world  and  in  every 
nation,  men  who  have  kept  loyal  to  their  sense  of  duty 
in  the  midst  of  the  frightfulest  tortures  which  human 
ingenuity,  whetted  by  malice,  could  inflict ;  men  who, 
when  nailed  to  the  stake,  when  the  fagots  have  crackled 
in  the  flames,  when  the  devouring  jaws  of  wild 
beasts  have  been  opened  for  their  destruction,  when 
their  limbs,  by  a  cruel  variety  of  infernal  mechanism, 
have  been  torn  piecemeal  one  from  the  other,  have 
preferred  the  serenity  of  rectitude  to  an  escape  from  these 
most  terrible  sufferings,  crowned  with  the  plaudits  of  a 
surrounding  world.  They  have  willingly  confronted 
death  rather  than  lose  honor,  or  tarnish  their  innocent 
consciousness  by  the  indelible  stains  of  injustice  or  un 
truth. 


and  Law  Reform.  43 

Here,  then,  is  a  radical  defect  of  Bentham's  moral 
teachings.  He  takes  no  account  of  this  deep-seated  sense 
of  right,  so  wide  and  irresistible  in  its  influences  over  the 
volitions  of  human  will.  That  all  good  acts  have  a  benef 
icent  tendency — that  temperance,  fortitude,  generosity, 
justice,  truth,  produce  the  happiest  consequences  both 
to  the  agent  and  to  society — that  whatever  we  feel  to  be 
virtuous  would  be  beneficial  if  performed  by  all  men 
under  the  same  conditions — that  the  disposition  to  con 
fer  happiness  is  accompanied  by  a  feeling  of  moral 
complacency — in  short,  that  the  production  of  the  great 
est  amount  of  good  is  an  inseparable  consequence  of 
virtue — we  admit  to  be  among  the  established  facts  of 
moral  science.  But  that  this  ulterior  happiness  is  to  be 
the  motive  with  which  virtuous  acts  are  to  be  performed, 
and  not  the  virtues  in  themselves,  or  because  they  are 
virtues,  we  cannot  admit.  It  strips  virtue  of  its  very 
character  as  virtue,  and  sinks  it  from  an  end  into  a 
means.  No  man  who  is  bold  because  it  is  more  dan 
gerous  to  be  cowardly,  is  a  brave  man.  No  man  is  be 
nevolent  who  distributes  pleasure,  not  because  it  is  gen 
erous,  but  because  it  is  reputable.  No  man  is  just  who 
acts  impartially,  not  because  it  is  right,  but  because  it  is 
safe  or  commanded  by  the  laws.  Virtue  is  an  imperi 
ous  goddess  exacting  a  willing  service,  a  service  for  her 
own  sake,  and  not  permitting  it  when  performed  for  any 
extrinsic  objects.  The  moment  the  motive  is  divided, 
the  worship  is  no  longer  acceptable,  and,  innocent  as  it 
may  apparently  be,  is  in  her  sight  impure. 

We  object,  then,  to  the  theory  of  utility  on  the  very 
ground  of  utility.  Whenever  any  other  motive  of  virtue 
than  virtue's  self  is  substituted  for  it,  the  moral  character 
loses  something  of  its  tension  as  well  as  of  its  dignity. 
We  diminish  by  it  that  intrinsic  pleasure  which  always 
attends  the  performance  of  a  virtuous  act.  It  weakens 


44  Jeremy  Bentham 

the  force  of  those  habitual  feelings  which  are  the  best 
promoters  of  rectitude  and  probity.  It  supplants  a 
strong  present  motive  by  a  more  distant,  and  conse 
quently  weaker,  inducement.  It  renders  moral  judg 
ments  uncertain,  fluctuating,  and  difficult.  It  opens 
the  heart  to  the  more  easy  approaches  of  self- 
delusion.  It  shifts  the  attention  from  the  interior  im 
pulse  to  the  bare  outward  act.  It  enables  the  selfish 
and  unamiable  passions  to  mingle  themselves  with  less 
probability  of  detection  among  nobler  impulses — tends 
to  justify  wrong  actions  under  the  disguise  of  expedi 
ency — allows  too  broad  a  discretion  in  the  application 
of  moral  rules — and  admits  too  readily  of  the  passage 
from  the  consideration  of  general,  to  that  of  particular 
and  specific,  consequences.  No  man  who  makes 
pleasure  his  chief  aim  can  give  a  full  development  to 
his  character,  or  form  an  adequate  notion  of  the  great 
purposes  of  human  existence,  or  of  the  destinies  of  so 
ciety. 

But  these  objections  do  not  apply  in  all  their  force  to 
the  principle  of  utility  as  it  operates  in  the  province  of 
the  legislator.  It  is  true,  the  legislator,  like  the  mor 
alist,  must  place  himself  under  the  guidance  of  the  im 
mutable  principles  of  Justice.  He  must  obey  the  in 
stinctive  dictates  of  that  moral  conviction  in  which  is 
laid  the  foundation  of  all  righteous  law.  Justice,  eternal 
and  unchangeable  Justice,  is  to  be  his  supreme  aim  in 
establishing  the  fundamental  or  constitutional  relations 
of  the  State.  But  within  this  primary  limit  he  legislates, 
not  for  himself,  but  for  a  community,  and  a  commu 
nity  which  presupposes,  in  the  very  meaning  of  the 
term,  a  collection  of  conflicting  interests  and  of  equal 
claims.  He  adjudicates  between  a  host  of  widely-vari 
ous  pretensions  ;  is  to  neglect  none,  and  favor  none  ; 
yet  is  to  distribute  the  advantages  of  law  over  a  wide 


and  Law  Reform.  45 

space,  and  among  a  multitude  of  competitors.  How 
can  he  discharge  his  duties  impartially  ?  How  is  he  to 
ascertain  what  is  best  in  all  circumstances?  Here  the 
necessity  for  some  general  rule  of  legislation  inter 
venes,  some  guide  to  direct  him  in  his  perplexities, 
and  to  preserve  him  from  shifting,  uncertain,  and  con 
fused  decisions.  Now  we  know  of  no  better  rule  in 
such  cases  than  that  which  insists  upon  producing  the 
highest  good  to  the  greatest  number  of  people. 

While  we  do  not  subscribe,  therefore,  to  Bentham's 
moral  theories,  we  confess  to  a  high  degree  of  admira 
tion  for  his  labors  in  the  reformation  of  jurisprudence. 
All  his  services  it  would  be  impossible,  in  this  brief  re 
view,  to  enumerate,  but  the  more  essential  parts  may  be 
recapitulated  in  a  few  sentences. 

i.  The  attempt  at  a  thorough  reform  of  legal  science 
was  in  itself  no  small  service.  He  found  the  English 
law  what  blind  usage,  occasionally  altered  by  hasty 
legislation,  and  from  time  to  time  corrected  by  fettered 
judicial  decisions,  with  such  improvements  as  pro 
fessional  writers  added,  had  made  it.  It  had  come  to 
be  what  it  was  piecemeal,  irregularly,  without  order  or 
system.  Founded  originally  on  the  feudal  relation,  it 
retained  the  feudal  spirit  long  after  society  had  out 
grown  its  barbarisms.  One  stage  of  civilization  had 
succeeded  another,  but  the  law  had  not  kept  pace  with 
the  change.  A  warlike  people  had  become  an  in 
dustrious  and  commercial  people,  but  there  was  no 
introduction  of  laws  fitted  to  their  new  modes  of  ex 
istence.  Whatever  alterations  took  place,  were  made 
by  forced  applications  of  old  rules,  or  by  new  rules 
brought  to  square  with  the  old,  through  a  process  of 
violent  adjustment.  As  opinion  and  social  customs 
advanced,  its  structure  became  constantly  more  hetero 
geneous  and  confused.  Here  a  part  would  fall  into 


46  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

disuse,  and  make  a  huge  hiatus  in  its  theory.  There  a 
portion  would  be  knocked  off,  in  the  struggles  of  so 
ciety  to  enlarge  itself,  and  the  place  supplied  by  some 
strange  and  uncongenial  substitute.  The  courts  would 
strain  a  point  one  day,  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  grow 
ing  wants  of  a  more  active  and  refined  state  of  human 
intercourse,  and  the  legislature  would  strain  another 
point  another  day,  either  to  rebuke  or  justify  the  courts. 
Thus,  construction  was  heaped  upon  construction,  eva 
sion  followed  evasion,  one  fantastic  fiction  became  the 
excuse  of  a  fiction  still  more  fantastic,  until  the  whole 
mass  seemed  like  a  vast  pile  of  rubbish,  or  rather  like 
some  of  those  ancient  structures  which  are  seen  in 
Italy,  with  here  a  broken  column,  there  a  shattered 
portico,  in  the  third  place  a  crumbling  roof,  but  the 
whole  grotesquely  stuck  together  with  plaster  and  wood, 
to  make  a  modern  habitation. 

In  the  entire  course  of  its  existence,  there  had  been 
no  attempt  to  remodel  it,  or  bring  its  parts  into  more 
perfect  symmetry  and  shape.  Of  the  thousands  that  in 
every  age  devoted  their  lives  to  the  study  of  it,  no  one 
cared  to  investigate  its  corruptions  or  undertake  the  la 
bor  of  improvement.*  Those  who  read  it,  read  it  to 
learn  what  it  was,  and  not  to  inquire  what  it  ought  to 
be.  Those  who  wrote  about  it,  wrote  as  expositors 
and  not  as  critics.  All  the  publications  put  forth  con 
cerning  it  aspired  to  no  higher  character  than  that  of 
digests,  abridgments,  commentaries,  synopses,  or  di 
dactic  essays.  Not  that  its  defects  were  unperceived, 
nor  that  its  cumbrous  and  illogical  reasonings  had  not 
forced  themselves  into  notice,  nor  that  its  injustice  had 
not  often  been  felt ;  for  there  had  been  many  and 
various  complaints  uttered  from  time  to  time  on  all 

*  The  attempts  of  Bacon  and  Hale  are  no  exceptions. 


and  Law  Reform.  47 

these  points.  Sometimes  a  judge  in  the  course  of  a 
decision  would  diffidently  suggest  an  improvement,  and 
sometimes  a  general  writer  would  speak  in  harsh  terms 
of  certain  of  its  details.  But  generally  the  system  was 
revered  in  proportion  as  it  was  absurd.  Elegant  dis 
sertations,  like  those  of  Blackstone,  had  persuaded  men 
that  it  was  "the  perfection  of  reason;"  and  as  few 
were  disposed  to  question  with  any  earnestness  the  dicta 
of  profound  and  skilful  lawyers,  there  was  an  almost 
unbroken  acquiescence  where  there  should  have  been 
as  unbroken  an  opposition. 

It  was  in  this  state  that  Bentham  found  it,  when  he 
ventured  upon  the  opinion  that  it  was  all  wrong.  It 
was  in  this  state  he  found  it,  when  he  began  to  ridi 
cule  its  pretensions,  and  lash  its  absurdities.  It  was 
in  this  state  he  found  it,  when  he  began  an  investiga 
tion,  with  a  view  to  root  up  its  very  foundations,  and 
build  the  entire  structure  anew.  He  was  not  satisfied 
with  the  examination  of  a  single  title,  nor  an  isolated 
branch,  but  he  applied  an  unsparing  analysis  to  each 
and  every  part,  picking  to  pieces,  demolishing,  tearing 
down,  and  building  up,  until  scarcely  a  particle  of  the 
original  fabric  was  left,  and  a  fairer  proportioned  edi 
fice  rose  on  its  ruins.  Even  if  his  efforts  had  been 
less  successful,  the  attempt  would  not  have  been  with 
out  its  uses.  It  would  have  broken,  at  least,  the  charm 
which  had  been  thrown  around  the  subject,  it  would 
have  attracted  attention  from  thinking  minds,  and  it 
would  have  prepared  the  way  for  subsequent  exertions 
more  pertinent  and  beneficial  than  his  own. 

2.  A  more  essential  service  rendered  by  Bentham 
was  the  manner  in  which  he  discharged  his  task.  He 
began,  not  in  a  hap-hazard  way,  destroying  wantonly 
whatever  seemed  to  him  unworthy,  but  in  obedience  to 
a  regular  and  consistent  design.  His  method  was  not 


48  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

novel  in  itself,  although  it  was  original  in  its  applica 
tion.  It  was  essentially  the  same  method  which  for 
more  than  a  century  had  been  the  glory  of  physical 
science.  It  was  in  another  form  the  observation  and 
induction  of  Bacon,  the  method  which  rejected  au 
thority,  which  dissected  sophism,  which  labored  for 
precision,  which  investigated  facts,  which  put  ques 
tions,  in  Bacon's  own  expressive  phrase,  to  the  object. 
He  settled  in  the  outset  his  guiding  principle,  and  then 
made  use  of  it  unflinchingly  in  the  treatment  of  the 
minutest  parts  of  his  inquiry.  One  of  his  profoundest 
chapters  was  that  in  which  he  expounds  the  false  methods 
of  reasoning  used  in  legislation.  He  showed  that  there 
could  be  but  one  right  reason,  and  that  the  various 
and  conflicting  principles  on  which  jurists  commonly 
relied  could  not  be  that  reason.  He  showed  that  an 
tiquity,  though  it  might  create  a  prejudice  in  favor  of  a 
law,  was  not  a  reason  for  it ;  that  the  sanctions  of  re 
ligion,  such  as  those  cited  from  the  Old  Testament  in 
the  famous  work  of  Algernon  Sidney,  were  not  reasons  ; 
that  an  arbitrary  definition,  such,  for  instance,  as  that 
with  which  Montesquieu  opened  his  great  treatise,  was 
not  a  reason  ;  that  metaphors,  like  that  of  the  English 
jurists  as  to  a  man's  house  being  his  castle — that  a  fic 
tion,  such  as  that  certain  offences  work  a  corruption  of 
blood — that  a  fancy,  such  as  Cocceiji's,  as  to  the  right 
of  a  father  over  his  children,  because  they  were  a  part 
of  his  body — that  antipathies  and  sympathies  arising  in 
the  breast  of  the  legislator — and  that  imaginary  laws, 
such  as  the  thousand-and-one  laws  of  nature  that  were 
spoken  of — were  not  reasons,  but  mere  pretences  put 
forth  to  escape  the  obligation  of  deciding  upon  solid, 
consistent,  and  tenable  principles.  In  rejecting  the 
pretexts  by  which  the  law,  as  well  the  good  portions  of 
it  as  the  bad,  were  defended,  and  vigorously  enforcing 


and  Law  Reform.  49 

the  strict  rules  he  had  prescribed,  it  became  necessary 
for  him  to  take  the  whole  body  of  the  law  apart,  to 
dissect  its  vessels,  articulations,  and  muscles  ;  to  pene 
trate  the  mysticism  which  had  all  along  enveloped  its 
logic  ;  to  examine  its  generalities  in  detail ;  to  inspect 
the  maxims  which  had  grown  gray  in  its  service;  to 
probe  the  fictions  interwoven  through  its  entire  texture  ; 
to  compare  piece  with  piece ;  and  to  prove  the  whole 
by  reducing  it  without  mercy  to  the  test  of  his  impartial 
standard.  He  found  it  encumbered  with  useless  forms, 
fettered  by  arbitrary  precedents,  abounding  in  flagrant 
absurdities,  and  pervaded  by  an  unwise  and  pernicious 
spirit. 

3.  But  not  content  with  pulling  down  so  conglom- 
erous  a  mass,  he  set  to  work  with  no  less  indomitable 
energy  on  the  task  of  putting  up  something  in  its  stead. 
In  this  process,  too,  he  taught  mankind  several  inval 
uable  truths.  He  demonstrated  that  the  framing  of 
laws  was  a  matter  of  practical  business,  to  be  conducted 
with  the  same  good  sense  which  plain  men  use  in 
their  ordinary  affairs.  He  took  the  law  from  the  num 
ber  of  those  objects  of  human  study  which  have  their 
roots  and  defences  in  authority,  and  attempted  to  give 
it  a  place  among  real  sciences — by  the  side  of  mathe 
matics,  chemistry,  and  general  physics.  He  did  more  ; 
he  brought  discredit  upon  all  mere  technical  systems, 
by  setting  before  us,  in  great  beauty  of  arrangement 
and  considerable  completeness  of  detail,  a  system 
founded  upon  a  natural  characteristic  of  those  actions 
which  are  the  subjects  of  law.  He  practically  exhibited 
the  advantages  of  that  system,  showing  how  it  was 
equally  applicable  in  all  nations  and  at  all  times  ;  how 
it  detected  bad  laws  by  the  mere  force  of  its  arrange 
ment,  giving  them  no  place  in  its  nomenclature  ;  how 
it  effectually  excluded  all  barely  technical  offences ; 
3 


5o  Jeremy  Bent  ham 

how  it  closed  the  door  upon  technical  reasonings, 
which  only  the  lawyer  can  understand  ;  and  how  it 
simplified  and  illustrated  the  institutions  and  combina 
tions  of  institutions  that  compose  the  matter  of  legal 
science. 

4.  Had  he  done  no  more  than  demonstrate  the 
possibility  of  LEGAL  CODES,  Bentham  would  have  accom 
plished  a  great  good.  His  views  in  this  respect  are 
peculiarly  original  and  just.  He  has  shown  how  it  was 
practicable  to  make  a  code  which  should  reduce  all  the 
laws  of  a  country  into  a  body  of  written  enactments, 
coming  directly  from  the  legislator,  and  adapted  to  the 
immediate  guidance  of  the  judge  in  the  decision  of  all 
the  various  cases  falling  under  his  cognizance.  This, 
of  course,  embraced  much  more  than  had  been  included 
in  the  codes  suggested  by  the  eminent  jurists  of  either 
ancient  or  modern  times.  The  code  of  Justinian,  ad 
mirable  as  it  proved  as  a  digest,  was  nothing  more  than 
an  attempt  to  bring  into  a  more  manageable  shape  the 
existing  laws  of  the  empire.  Tribonian,  and  those  who 
were  engaged  with  him,  merely  undertook  to  make  a 
more  compendious  arrangement  of  what  was  found  in 
the  Rescripta  Principium,  the  Edicta  Prastorum,  the 
Leges  et  Plebiscita,  which  they  regarded  as  the  estab 
lished  rules  of  the  State.  Nor  did  the  code  of  Frederic, 
designed  for  the  Prussian  monarchy,  nor  even  that  of 
Napoleon,  aspire  to  a  much  higher  character.  The 
latter,  which  is  the  most  perfect  of  all,  and  a  vast  im 
provement  upon  the  old  French  law,  fails,  in  leaving 
its  meaning  in  too  many  instances  to  be  determined  by 
the  decisions  of  the  judges,  which  in  time  accumulate 
precedents,  and  make  the  study  of  the  science  a  matter 
of  as  immense  labor  as  that  of  the  common  law  of 
England.  It  did  not  contain  within  itself  a  definition 
of  its  own  terms,  nor  an  accurate  and  appropriate  classi- 


and  Law  Reform.  5i 

fication  of  its  parts.  Bentham's  idea  went  farther  than 
this.  A  code  in  the  true  sense,  he  thought,  should  be 
one  comprehending  whatever  was  necessary  to  enable 
the  judge  to  put  in  force,  without  extraneous  or  adven 
titious  aid,  the  will  of  the  legislator ;  which  should 
possess,  if  we  may  so  term  it,  the  power  of  self-inter 
pretation  ;  and  which  should  make  provision  for  its  own 
improvement  and  correction.  In  his  plans  for  the 
codes  of  Russia  and  the  United  States,  he  endeavored 
to  realize  this  general  theory,  by  showing  of  what  parts 
a  code  should  consist,  and  the  relation  of  the  parts. 
But  the  nearest  actual  approach  to  his  own  notion  is 
effected  in  the  Penal  Code,  prepared  by  the  Law  Com 
missioners  of  Great  Britain  for  the  government  of  India, 
published  in  1837.  Whoever  will  consult  it,  will  dis 
cover,  if  not  a  thoroughly  unexceptionable  code,  one 
that  proves  the  practicability  of  codification,  and  the 
beauty  of  an  orderly  and  systematic  arrangement.  How 
it  has  operated  practically  we  are  not  informed,  but  we 
have  no  doubt  of  its  success,  from  the  fact  that  it  com 
bines,  as  the  framers  of  it  state,  the  advantages  of  a 
statute  book  and  of  a  collection  of  decided  cases.  It  is, 
at  any  rate,  an  approximation  to  something  better  than 
the  miserable  jumble  of  rules  called  law,  to  be  found  in 
most  nations  of  the  civilized  world. 

5.  Be  the  opinion,  however,  what  it  may  in  respect 
to  the  practicability  of  codification — and  we  know  that 
many,  even  among  law  reformers,  are  dubious — it  must 
be  conceded  that  Bentham,  by  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  he  prosecuted  his  task,  if  not  by  any  actual  suc 
cess,  kindled  a  spirit  of  active  inquiry  on  this  subject, 
which  is  working  in  the  bosom  of  society  with  more 
and  more  power  to  this  day.  Beginning  with  the  private 
student  and  the  philosopher,  it  has  gradually  stolen  its 
way  into  houses  of  legislation.  At  first  Dumont,  then 


52  Jeremy  Bentham 

Mill,  then  Romilly,  then  Brougham,  and  then  less  con 
spicuous  men,  caught  the  impulse,  and  by  a  series  of 
persevering  exertions,  in  the  midst  of  strong  opposition, 
directed  public  attention  to  the  serious  evils  which  he 
had  unveiled.  The  progress  of  opinion,  it  is  true, 
has  been  slow,  but  when  we  contemplate  the  obstacles 
it  has  met,  in  the  general  worship  of  authority,  in  the 
pride  and  indifference  of  the  legal  profession,  and  in  the 
stubborn  habits  of  society,  we  are  surprised  that  so 
much  has  been  already  accomplished.  We  were  struck, 
in  reading  a  late  English  work,*  at  the  number  of 
changes  that  had  been  already  imperceptibly  effected. 
Of  these  may  be  enumerated  alterations  materially  im 
proving  the  relation  of  debtor  and  creditor,  diminishing 
the  number  of  oaths,  softening  the  penalties  and  ame 
liorating  the  spirit  of  criminal  law,  simplifying  the 
proceedings  and  forms  of  pleading  at  common  law, 
denning  more  distinctly  the  rights,  duties,  and  revenues 
of  ecclesiastical  persons,  consolidating  statutes,  and 
harmonizing  and  modernizing  the  barbarous  provisions 
of  the  law  of  real  property.  All  these  we  attribute  in 
directly  to  Bentham,  because  his  was  the  seminal  mind 
from  which  the  movement  sprang. 

6.  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten,  in  an  enumeration  of 
the  services  of  the  same  great  mind,  what  ought  to  have 
been  insisted  on  before,  that  wrong  as  he  was  in  his 
general  theory  of  politics,  yet  he  has  done  much  theo 
retically  toward  establishing  the  true  functions  of  gov 
ernment.  He  has  stated  with  more  clearness  than  any 
preceding  writer  the  real  objects  of  civil  law,  and  the 
best  methods  of  attaining  them.  If  he  has  not  carried 
his  ideas  to  the  extent  to  which  American  statesmen 
aie  disposed  to  push  their  theories  of  government,  he 

*  Miller  on  the  Unsettled  Condition  of  the  Law. 


and  Law  Reform.  63 

has  made  a  near  approximation  to  it.  Indeed,  the 
most  radical  of  American  statesmen  can  find  much  in 
struction  in  what  he  has  uttered  on  this  head.  Law  of 
any  kind  he  regards  as  a  retrenchment  of  liberty,  and  is 
never  to  be  imposed  without  a  sufficient  and  specific  rea 
son.  For  there  is  always  a  reason  against  every  coercive 
law  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a  restraint  upon  the  liberty  of  the 
citizen.  Unless,  therefore,  he  who  proposes  a  law  can 
prove  that  there  is  not  only  a  specific  reason  in  favor  of 
it,  but  a  reason  stronger  than  the  general  reason  against 
it,  he  transcends  his  province  and  invades  the  rights  of 
the  individual.  Again,  assuming  that  the  single  aim 
of  the  legislator  should  be  to  promote  the  greatest  pos 
sible  happiness  of  the  community,  and  that  as  the  care 
of  his  enjoyments  ought  to  be  left  entirely  to  the  indi 
vidual,  he  argues  that  it  becomes  the  principal  duty  of 
the  government  to  guard  against  pains.  If  it  protects 
the  rights  of  personal  security,  if  it  defends  property,  if 
it  watches  over  the  general  safety,  it  accomplishes  its 
main  purposes.  Government  approaches  perfection  in 
proportion  as  the  sacrifice  of  liberty  on  the  part  of  the 
subject  is  diminished,  and  his  acquisition  of  rights  is 
increased.  Can  the  most  rigid  democrat  carry  his  own 
theory  much  farther  ?  Is  it  not,  indeed,  precisely  the 
thing  for  which  we.  who  are  the  advocates  of  equal  jus 
tice,  contend  ?  Adopt  these  principles  in  legislation, 
and  would  they  not  simplify  government  until  it  became 
what  it  ought  to  be,  a  mere  instrument  for  the  protec 
tion  of  person  and  property  ?  Would  they  not  abolish 
all  partial  legislation,  root  out  exclusive  privileges,  de 
stroy  monopolies,  prevent  the  granting  of  acts  of  special 
incorporation,  do  away  with  unequal  laws,  and  leave 
society  to  its  own  energies  and  resources,  in  the 
conduct  of  its  business  and  the  prosecution  of  its 
enterprises  ?  And  this  is  all  for  which  the  great  demo- 


54  Jeremy  Be  nth  am 

cratic  party,  the  party  of  impartial  Justice,  is  striving. 
It  seeks  to  direct  government  to  its  true  ends,  to  restore 
its  action  from  the  partial  direction  that  has  been  given 
it,  and  urge  it  on  to  the  accomplishment  of  those  general 
objects,  for  which  alone  it  was  instituted,  and  which  alone 
are  compatible  with  the  rights,  the  interests,  and  the  im 
provement  of  man.  Bentham  himself,  it  must  be  ad 
mitted,  has  sometimes  departed  from  these  objects,  but 
only  when  he  violated  unconsciously  his  own  logic. 

We  have  dwelt  longer  upon  these  topics  than  it  was 
our  intention  when  we  began,  and  longer,  we  fear,  than 
the  patience  of  the  reader  will  excuse.  We  have  done 
so,  because,  enamored  of  the  theme,  we  have  endeav 
ored  to  kindle  the  interest  of  others.  If  we  have  quick 
ened  the  purposes  of  any  to  engage  in  the  great  study 
of  law  reform,  the  time  has  not  been  lost.  It  is  a  great 
subject,  connected  with  the  best  interests  of  society, 
and  worthy  of  the  patient  labor  of  the  noblest  minds. 
We  know  of  no  way  in  which  the  intellect  could  be 
more  profitably  tasked,  or  the  purest  sympathies  more 
suitably  indulged,  or  the  firmest  moral  purpose  more 
honorably  tried,  or  greater  good  conferred  on  men,  or 
a  richer  harvest  of  reputation  reaped,  than  in  prosecu 
ting  the  inquiries  which  Bentham  so  auspiciously  com 
menced.  The  law  is  yet  a  fallow  field,  covered  with 
stubble,  thorns,  and  weeds.  There  are  many  briers  to 
be  rooted  out,  and  many  vigorous  and  wholesome 
shoots  to  be  planted  in  their  place.  What  obscurities 
perplex  its  theory,  what  inconsistencies  confuse  its  de 
tails,  what  vexations  attend  its  practice  !  How  num 
berless  the  absurdities  that  disfigure  the  statute-books  ! 
How  expensive,  wearisome,  and  ambiguous  the  greater 
part  of  its  proceedings !  Would  any  one  confer  a 
blessing  on  the  poor,  let  him  shorten  its  delays  and 
diminish  its  costs.  Would  any  one  spread  peace  among 


and  Law  Reform. 


55 


men,  let  him  simplify  its  rules  and  make  certain  its  de 
cisions.  A  worthier  name  could  not  be  achieved  than 
by  taking-  part  in  the  effort  to  correct  its  abuses,  and  to 
conform  it  to  the  image  of  immutable  Justice.  There 
may  be  more  lucrative,  but  there  are  certainly  no  more 
honorable  or  useful  spheres  of  exertion,  than  in  the  de 
partment  Of  LAW  REFORM. 


EDWARD    LIVINGSTON    AND    HIS 
CODE.* 

|E  endeavored  in  a  late  number  of  this  Review 
to  make  our  readers  better  acquainted  with  one 
of  the  great  intellects  of  England,  and  we  now 
turn  to  a  kindred  genius  of  our  own  country,  who  in 
many  respects  reduced  to  practice  what  Bentham  had 
only  suggested  ;  who,  taking  up  the  subject  of  law  re 
form  where  the  master  had  left  it,  pursued  it  to  a  com 
plete  consummation.  Edward  Livingston,  in  the  code 
known  as  the  Code  of  Louisiana,  raised  himself  to  the 
first  rank  among  jurists  as  well  as  among  public  bene- 
fectors  ;  and  he  conferred  a  distinction  upon  his  chosen 
State  more  glorious  and  lasting  than  ever  warrior  gave 
to  the  land  his  blood  had  defended. 

Livingston  was  born  in  the  colony  of  New  York,  in 
the  year  1764.  His  family,  descended  from  one  of  the 
most  powerful  and  illustrious  clans  in  Scotland,  driven 

*  Eloge  Historique  de  M.  Livingston,  par  M.  Mignet,  Secretaire 
Perpetuel  de  T Academic  des  Sciences,  Morales,  et  Politiques.  Lu  a  la 
Seance  Publique,  du  30  juin,  1838.  Paris,  1838. 

A  System  of  Penal  Law  for  the  State  of  Louisiana,  prepared  under 
the  authority  of  a  law  of  said  State.  By  Edward  Livingston.  To 
which  are  prefixed  a  Preliminary  Report  on  the  plan  of  a  Penal 
Code,  and  introductory  reports  to  the  several  codes  embraced  in  the 
system  of  Penal  Law.  Philadelphia,  1833. 

From  the  Democratic  Review,  July  and  Sept.,  1841. 


Edward  Livingston  5 7 

away  by  religious  persecution,  had  been  among  the 
earliest  settlers  of  America.  Its  members  brought  with 
them  to  the  place  of  their  exile,  along  with  lofty  tastes 
and  generous  manners,  an  indestructible  love  of  liberty. 
When  the  infant  colonies,  oppressed  by  the  mother 
country,  began  to  stir  with  the  aspirations  of  independ 
ence,  their  sentiments  and  principles  had  already  pre 
pared  them  to  take  part  with  those  who  struck  for  free 
dom.  Edward  Livingston,  the  youngest  of  eleven 
children,  was  a  witness  of  many  of  the  exciting  scenes 
of  the  revolutionary  war.  His  brother  Robert,  a  mem 
ber  of  that  magnanimous  Congress  which,  for  seven 
years  during  the  vicissitudes  of  a  bloody  contest  did  not 
despair  of  its  country,  shared  with  Jefferson,  Franklin, 
Adams,  and  Sherman  the  honor  of  drawing  up  that 
Declaration  of  Independence  which  became  the  "'  birth- 
act"  of  a  nation.  His  brother-in-law,  the  chivalrous 
Montgomery,  in  the  young  vigor  of  his  hopes  and  fac 
ulties,  perished  gloriously  in  the  assault  upon  Quebec. 
And  his  hearth  was  ever  the  hospitable  home  of  La  Fay- 
ette,  and  those  other  noble  auxiliaries  who  so  gallantly 
battled  for  the  rights  of  humanity,  in  sustaining  the  fee 
ble  but  spirited  arms  of  the  small  band  of  American 
patriots. 

Under  the  influence  of  such  associations  the  basis  of 
his  character  was  laid  ;  and  when  he  afterward  came  to 
act  for  himself,  a  long  life  of  public  usefulness  and  un 
spotted  purity  testified  that  early  impressions  had  been 
durable.  He  never  forgot  the  love  of  justice,  nor  the 
disinterested  patriotism  that  had  always  marked  the 
characters  of  his  ancestors  and  friends. 

He  devoted  himself  to  the  profession  of  the  law.  In 
his  preparatory  studies,  which  were  alike  thorough  and 
discursive,  he  made  himself  familiar  with  the  doctrines 
of  the  common  law,  adopted  from  the  mother-country, 


58  Edward  Livingston 

and  with  the  principles  of  the  civil  law,  as  they  were 
found  in  the  old  writers,  and  illustrated  on  the  continent 
of  Europe.  His  practice  in  the  courts  was  followed  by 
all  the  success  that  a  distinguished  and  wealthy  connec 
tion  could  give  a.  young  man  of  extraordinary  industry 
and  talent.  He  rose  rapidly  into  fame;  and  in  1794 
was  chosen  a  representative  of  New  York  in  Congress. 

It  was  an  important  epoch.  The  American  people, 
just  emerged  from  a  fierce  and  protracted  struggle  for 
independence,  had  formed  a  government  before  then 
unknown  to  the  legislation  of  the  world.  Washington 
had  been  selected  as  the  first  to  administer  it ;  and 
around  him  were  gathered  those  who,  either  in  the 
council  or  the  field,  had  assisted  him  in  the  mighty 
work  of  revolution.  A  new  constitution,  binding  free 
and  sovereign  States  in  an  indissoluble  league,  was 
about  to  be  tried.  Its  strength  and  its  weaknesses,  its 
tendencies,  whether  for  good  or  for  evil,  were  soon  to 
develop  themselves  in  practical  operation.  Parties, 
taking  their  color  from  their  proclivities  toward  a  stronger 
government  or  a  stronger  people,  were  already  formed. 
At  the  head  of  one  division  stood  Thomas  Jefferson, 
the  ardent  friend  of  liberty — sanguine,  far-sighted,  saga 
cious — and  from  his  youth  a  champion  of  the  French 
humanitarian  philosophy.  At  the  head  of  the  other 
was  Alexander  Hamilton — accomplished,  ambitious, 
and  eloquent — a  friend  of  liberty,  but  distrustful  of  the 
people,  and  inclined  to  the  politics  of  England.  Liv 
ingston  lost  no  time  in  ranging  himself  among  the 
former.  He  entered  with  enthusiasm  into  the  defence 
of  the  popular  measures  of  his  day.  He  opposed  the 
British  treaty  of  1794  :  he  fought  resolutely  against  the 
sedition  law  ;  and  to  this  day,  in  many  of  the  log  huts 
of  the  western  frontiers,  his  able  speech  against  the 
alien  acts  hangs  upon'the  walls.  Then,  too,  he  formed 


and  his  Code.  59 

the  acquaintance  of  a  delegate  from  the  distant  and 
obscure  territory  of  Tennessee,  with  whom  he  was  after 
ward  destined  to  perform  so  conspicuous  a  part,  both 
in  war  and  peace — Andrew  Jackson. 

Livingston  continued  in  Congress  till  the  end  of 
Adams's  term.  Selected  by  his  fellow-citizens  then  to 
discharge  the  duties  of  chief  municipal  magistrate  of 
New  York,  he  had  occasion  to  manifest  other  traits  of 
character  than  those  which  had  given  him  political 
prominence.  Soon  after  his  election  the  yellow  fever 
broke  out  with  unusual  violence.  Livingston  gave  him 
self  up  entirely  to  the  care  of  the  sick  ;  and,  by  personal 
visitation,  the  gratuitous  distribution  of  his  fortune,  and 
a  wise  direction  of  the  city  charities,  contributed  greatly 
to  the  restoration  of  health.  When  seized  himself  with 
the  disease,  just  as  it  began  to  abate,  the  spontaneous 
gratitude  of  the  whole  population,  shown  by  anxious 
inquiries,  by  expressions  of  sympathy,  and  by  gifts,  told 
how  deeply  his  noble  generosity  had  fastened  him  to 
the  affections  of  all  classes. 

But  that  freedom  from  selfish  feeling  which  had  saved 
others,  sacrificed  himself;  and,  in  the  fortieth  year  of 
his  age,  when  he  had  fondly  thought  that  leisure  would 
be  afforded  him  to  resume  those  elevated  studies  that 
were  the  charm  of  his  life,  he  found  himself  stripped  of 
wealth,  and  compelled  a  second  time  to  begin  his  pro 
fessional  career.*  To  a  man  of  less  energy  this  would 
have  been  no  ordinary  trial  ;  to  Livingston  it  was  only 
an  occasion  for  the  display  of  his  lofty  virtues.  He 
speedily  arranged  his  affairs,  and  a  few  months  saw  him 


*  We  should  dwell  more  minutely  upon  these  incidents  of  Mr. 
Livingston's  life,  had  not  the  elegant  pen  of  an  admiring  friend, 
Mr.  August  Davezac,  already  anticipated  us.  See  Democratic  Review, 
First  Series,  Vol.  viii.,  No.  xxxiv. 


6o  Edward  Livingston 

an  emigrant  to  the  new  territory  of  Louisiana,  recently 
purchased  by  the  United  States  from  the  French.  It 
was  then  a  new  and  uncultivated  country,  but  beautifully 
placed  by  Providence  in  one  of  the  largest  and  richest 
valleys  of  the  world,  watered  by  the  grandest  of  rivers, 
and  at  the  head  of  a  magnificent  gulf,  communicating 
with  the  main  ocean.  The  great  stream  of  population, 
so  long  hemmed  in  by  the  ranges  of  the  Alleghanies,  had 
burst  its  barriers,  and  was  already  spreading  over  the 
almost  boundless  prairies  of  the  West.  In  a  few  years 
the  forests  had  disappeared,  and  fertile  plantations  and 
growing  towns  covered  their  sites  ;  a  fine  city  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi  served  as  an  outlet  to  its  pro 
ductions  ;  and  wealth,  order,  and  civilization  rewarded 
the  toils  of  the  enterprising  settlers. 

Livingston  engaged  once  more  in  the  practice  of  the 
law,  and  fortune  followed  his  exertions.  Not  satisfied, 
however,  with  the  mere  accumulation  of  property,  he 
suggested,  and  accomplished  in  connection  with  others, 
important  reforms  of  his  favorite  science.  The  various 
fortunes  of  Louisiana,  as  a  dependency,  first  of  Spain 
and  then  of  France,  next  under  a  territorial  government, 
and,  finally,  as  an  independent  State,  had  introduced  a 
world  of  confusion  into  its  law.  It  was  a  vast  hodge 
podge  of  Spanish  customs,  French  decrees,  English 
precedents,  and  conflicting  legislative  enactments.  In 
its  forms  of  procedure,  particularly,  it  was  as  defective 
as  it  was  inconsistent.  Livingston  set  about  correcting 
its  evils.  Rejecting  alike  the  interminable  proceedings 
of  French,  and  the  absurd  fictions  of  English  practice, 
he  formed  a  short  and  simple  code  which  combined  the 
advantages  of  the  various  .systems  that  prevailed,  while 
it  was  free  from  their  defects.  He  digested  and  meth 
odized  also  the  more  ancient  civil  laws  that  were  still 
recognized  as  authoritative.  Nor  was  it  the  least  of  the 


and  his  Code.  61 

benefits  flowing  from  these  preparatory  labors,  that  his 
mind  was  directed  to  that  grand  and  comprehensive 
scheme  of  law-reform  which  he  subsequently  carried 
into  effect,  with  such  honor  to  himself  and  to  the 
legislature  that  had  had  the  wisdom  to  engage  his 
talents. 

The  war  of  1812  interrupted  his  plans.  Ready  as  he 
was  to  do  good  to  his  country  with  his  pen,  he  was  no 
less  ready  to  take  up  the  sword  in  her  defence.  During 
the  siege  of  New  Orleans,  he  seconded  the  efforts  of  the 
patriotic  Jackson  ;  he  shared  in  the  danger  and  glory 
of  the  battle  ;  and  when  the  strife  had  ceased,  he  was 
employed  in  the  benevolent  task  of  negotiating  an  ex 
change  of  prisoners. 

With  the  return  of  peace,  the  great  purpose  of  his  life 
was  renewed.  Legal  studies  again  absorbed  his  thoughts ; 
he  completed  a  plan  of  penal  reform  ;  and  getting  him 
self  elected  to  the  Legislature  of  the  State,  he  there 
unfolded  his  enterprise.  In  February,  1820,  he  was 
appointed  to  prepare  a  report,  at  length,  of  all  that  he 
proposed  to  accomplish.  Livingston  undertook  the 
task  with  avidity,  making  himself  acquainted  with  what 
ever  had  been  done  in  his  own  country  and  abroad  in 
relation  to  the  subject,  corresponding  with  distinguished 
jurisconsults  of  all  nations,  comparing  the  principles 
of  every  theory — and  before  the  end  of  four  years  had 
the  satisfaction  to  see  his  plan  approved. 

It  is  of  that  plan  we  design  to  give  some  account,  but 
we  shall  advert  beforehand  to  what  had  been  done  for 
a  reformation  of  penal  law  at  the  time  Livingston 
began  his  labors. 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  modern  civilization,  those 
who  made  the  laws  for  the  trial  and  punishment  of 
criminals  seem  to  have  been  moved  solely  by  a  spirit  of 
blind  and  unmitigated  ferocity.  Society,  in  departing 


62  Edward  Livingston 

from  many  of  the  barbarous  usages  of  the  feudal  age, 
retained  much  of  its  savageness  of  manners  and  dispo 
sition.  The  discipline^  of  force  under  which  it  had 
been  educated,  continued  long  after  to  exert  an  influ 
ence  upon  the  habits  and  opinions  of  the  people.  The 
increasing  intercourse  among  States  and  men,  a  conse 
quence  of  the  growth  of  commerce,  while  it  liberalized 
the  pursuits  and  refined  the  courtesies  of  life,  did  not 
efface  the  traces  of  former  selfishness  and  brutality,  or 
remove  from  existing  institutions  those  fierce  and  vindic 
tive  provisions  which  a  ruder  condition  had  originated. 
Mistaking  severity  for  justice,  supposing  vengeance  to 
be  the  single  object  of  public,  as  it  had  been  of  private 
punishment,  criminals  (unless  protected  by  rank  or 
interest),  were  treated  by  the  law  as  outcasts  ;  they 
were  arrested  without  cause,  condemned  without  trial, 
and  punished  with  the  most  excruciating  tortures  and 
the  most  infamous  deaths.  Denied  the  right  of  being 
heard  in  their  own  defence,  they  were  subjected  to  insult 
and  caprice,  and  often  compelled,  by  the  rack  or  flame, 
to  confess  crimes  of  which  they  had  never  been  guilty, 
or  to  purchase  immunity  by  the  grossest  and  most 
degrading  falsehoods.  Secret  tribunals,  inquisitions, 
lettres-de-cachet,  mutilations,  and  indiscriminate  butch 
ery  were  the  instruments  with  which  it  often  executed 
its  purposes,  alike  upon  offenders  of  every  age  and  sex 
and  of  every  degree  of  guilt. 

Even  in  England,  distinguished  from  other  nations 
by  the  institution  of  the  trial  by  jury,  by  the  habeas- 
corpus  act,  and  by  the  sturdy  and  independent  spirit  of 
the  people,  these  harsher  features  of  criminal  jurispru 
dence  were  relieved,  but  not  obliterated.  "Prisoners 
were  deprived  the  assistance  of  counsel ;  men  were 
executed  because  they  could  not  read  ;  those  who  re 
fused  to  answer  were  compelled  to  die  under  the  most 


and  his   Code.  63 

cruel  torture.  Executions  for  some  crimes  were  attended 
with  butchery  that  would  have  disgusted  a  savage.  The 
life  and  honor  of  the  accused  were  made  to  depend  on 
the  uncertain  issue  of  a  judicial  combat.  A  wretched 
sophistry  introduced  the  doctrine  of  corrupted  blood. 
Heretics  and  witches  were  committed  to  the  flames.  No 
proportion  was  preserved  between  crimes  and  punish 
ments.  The  cutting  of  a  twig  and  the  assassination  of 
a  parent ;  breaking  a  fish-pond  and  poisoning  a  whole 
family  or  murdering  them  in  their  sleep,  all  incurred 
the  same  penalties  ;  and  between  two  and  three  hundred 
different  actions,  many  not  deserving  the  name  of 
offences,  were  punishable  by  death." 

Society  was  particularly  inert  in  emancipating  itself 
from  this  capricious  despotism.  Nothing  is  changed 
with  more  difficulty  than  practices  that  have  received 
the  sanction  of  antiquity  and  habit.  Even  political 
evils,  falling  upon  large  classes  of  the  community,  and 
thus  arraying  against  them  a  combined  opposition,  are 
long  permitted  to  develop  their  effects  before  the  masses 
are  aroused  to  demand  a  change.  How  much  greater 
the  delay  in  regard  to  laws  which  inflict  their  curses 
only  at  intervals  and  upon  single  and  friendless  per 
sons  !  Criminal  legislation,  more  than  all  other  kinds  of 
legislation,  was  thus  marked  by  the  slowness  of  its  prog 
ress.  Now  and  then,  when  the  public  sense  of  jus 
tice  was  offended  by  some  extraordinary  instance  of 
severity,  slight  modifications  were  made  in  the  existing 
arrangements  ;  but  the  great  body  of  them  were  suffered 
to  remain  in  all  their  original  deformity.  The  bench 
and  the  bar,  apparently  infatuated  by  a  system  which 
had  neither  beauty  nor  truth,  nor  any  charms  save  the 
equivocal  charms  of  age  to  recommend  it,  applied 
themselves  diligently  to  its  study,  but  did  not  give  a 
thought  to  its  improvement.  The  meliorating  influ- 


64  Edward  Livingston 

ences  of  a  growing  civilization,  that  seem  to  have  touched 
with  a  quicker  life  every  other  sort  of  human  activity, 
did  not  reach  the  secluded  precincts  of  the  courts. 
Had  it  not  been  for  the  liberal  spirit  of  popular  writers, 
penal  law  would  have  continued  what  barbarism  had 
made  it.  But  Montesquieu,  by  the  spirit  of  justice  that 
pervaded  his  great  work,  Beccaria,  by  his  solemn  pro 
tests  against  the  punishment  of  death,  Filangieri,  by 
his  wise  and  noble  sentiments,  prepared  the  way  for  the 
great  English  luminary,  Bentham,  who  shed  such  a 
flood  of  light  upon  every  department  of  legal  reform. 
It  would  be  hard  to  put  together  a  more  heterogene 
ous  and,  but  for  the  importance  of  the  subject,  a  more 
amusing  mass  than  was  formed  by  the  criminal  laws  of 
Louisiana,  when  Mr.  Livingston  began  his  task.  The 
province  having  been  successively  under  the  govern 
ment  of  Spain,  France,  and  the  United  States,  had  re 
ceived  from  each  its  peculiar  traditions,  customs,  and 
statutes.  These  had  been  variously  modified  in  the 
several  stages  of  transformation,  by  local  enactments 
which  the  changes  rendered  necessary.  But  the  most 
glaring  defects  arose  from  a  combined  recognition  of 
the  authority  of  the  English  common  law  and  of  the 
equally  old  institutions  of  Spain.  The  common  law 
of  England,  much  as  it  has  been  extolled,  is,  at  the 
best,  a  rude,  uncertain,  inconsistent,  and  dangerous 
jumble  of  precedents  and  usages.  It  is  confessedly 
founded  upon  general  and  local  customs,  the  origin  of 
many  of  which  is  lost  in  antiquity.  It  is  unwritten, 
and  liable  to  be  determined  by  the  variable  and  arbi 
trary  decisions  of  the  Courts.  Twenty  years  of  labori 
ous  study  are  insufficient  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of 
what  it  declares ;  and,  when  it  is  once  learned,  it 
abounds  in  the  absurdest  fictions,  and  the  most  capri 
cious  technicalities.  It  is  an  unseemly  piece  of  patch- 


and  his  Code.  65 

work,  a  residuum  of  the  conceit  and  insolence  of 
.uncultivated  centuries,  a  depository  of  all  the  debris  of 
society,  crumbled  off  under  the  influence  of  advancing 
intelligence  and  refinement.  It  was,  however,  outdone 
in  absurdities  by  the  relics  of  the  ancient  Spanish  laws, 
in  which  the  most  ludicrous  and  the  most  horrid  pro 
visions  were  conjoined.  The  legislation  of  the  fifteenth 
century  was  considered  law  for  the  people  of  the  nine 
teenth  ;  and  offences  that  only  could  be  committed  in 
the  days  of  witchcraft  and  judicial  astrology,  were 
ranged  side  by  side  with  invasions  of  property  or  at 
tacks  on  the  person.  Infamous  punishments  could  be 
inflicted  at  the  option  of  any  choleric  magistrate.  Polit 
ical  disabilities  were  attached  to  the  most  innocent  acts  ; 
gamblers,  buffoons,  usurers,  recreant  knights,  promise- 
breakers,  comedians,  and  procurers,  were  classed  to 
gether  as  persons  equally  dishonorable  ;  a  child  born 
out  of  wedlock  could  never  serve  as  a  witness  ;  a  law 
yer  who  should  cite  the  law  falsely  was  indictable  ; 
and  the  use  of  incantations,  love-powders,  and  wax  im 
ages,  was  specially  punished.  Divination  was  a  capi 
tal  offence,  except  when  done  by  astronomy,  "  one  of 
the  seven-  liberal  arts,  taken  from  the  books  of  Ptolemy 
and  the  other  sages."  Sorcerers,  fortune-tellers  of 
every  description,  and  enchanters  who  raised  the  spirits 
of  the  dead,  "except  it  was  done  to  exorcise  the  devil, 
or  to  preserve  the  crops  from  hail,  lightning,  and  insects," 
were  threatened  with  death.  Blaspheming  the  Virgin 
Mary,  heresy  against  the  Catholic  church;  crucifying 
young  children  at  Jewish  festivals,  were  all  enumerated 
misdemeanors ;  and  for  a  thousand  frivolous  things, 
as  well  as  for  more  important  matters,  a  man  was 
liable  to  lose  his  head  or  his  limbs.  It  was  doubtful, 
indeed,  whether  the  torture,  in  its  most  excruciating 
application,  could  not  be  legitimately  used  at  the 


66  Edward  Livingston 


discretion  of  the  judges.  Surely,  vagaries  of  this  kind 
were  as  disgraceful  as  they  were  dangerous  to  the. 
people  by  whom  they  were  endured.  Laws  so  absurd, 
so  conflicting,  so  pernicious,  called  for  a  reform  ;  and 
yet  the  task  of  accomplishing  it  was  no  easy  labor. 

Mr.  Livingston,  aware  of  the  high  responsibility  he 
assumed,  gave  to  the  discharge  of  his  duty  his  best 
faculties  and  most  profound  study.  While  he  deter 
mined  that  no  dread  of  mere  innovation  should  restrain 
him  from  proposing  the  most  radical  changes,  he  was 
yet  fully  conscious  of  the  importance  of  consulting  the 
habits  and  feelings  of  the  people.  A  simple  repeal  of 
laws  that  had  become  offensive  would  not  be  enough  ; 
the  modification  and  arrangement  of  existing  statutes 
would  in  a  short  time  have  led  to  the  same  evils  that 
were  then  deplored  ;  and  the  introduction  of  a  body  of 
laws  before  unknown,  might  be  viewed  with  prejudice 
and  alarm.  He  resolved,  therefore,  upon  the  construc 
tion  of  a  code,  at  once  simple  and  congruous,  which 
should  retain  whatever  of  the  old  laws  might  be  pertinent, 
but  conform  at  the  same  time  to  principles  deduced 
from  just  and  enlightened  reason.  In  this,  he  evinces 
his  sagacity  and  wisdom.  A  code  is  the  best -form  in 
which  the  supreme  rules  of  the  State  can  be  presented, 
particularly  in  relation  to  criminal  matters.  It  em 
bodies,  in  a  brief  compass,  accurately  denned,  methodi 
cally  classified,  complete  as  a  whole  and  in  its  parts,  all 
that  it  concerns  the  public  to  know  of  their  legal  rights 
and  duties.  "  The  judge  it  enables,  in  a  moment,  to  as 
certain  his  own  powers,  to  detect  what  is  an  offence,  to 
discover  how  it  is  to  be  proved,  to  administer  the  pun 
ishment  ;  the  citizen  is  informed,  with  no  less  ease, 
when  his  rights  have  been  infringed  or  how  his  interests 
are  to  be  protected  ;  and  the  legislature,  without  legal 
acquirement  or  experience,  is  made  competent  to  re- 


and  his  Code.  67 

peal,  supply,  or  amend  any  incongruity  or  defect  de 
veloped  in  the  course  of  its  practical  working.  By  its 
brevity,  its  order,  its  accuracy,  and  its  comprehensive 
ness,  a  code  must  ever  be  superior  to  every  other  form 
of  instituting  and  publishing  the  supreme  will  of  the 
Slate.  Let  it  contain  within  itself  a  provision  for  self- 
rectification,  and  the  acts  of  subsequent  legislatures, 
which  have  now  the  effect  of  multiplying  and  confusing 
laws,  would  bring  them  at  each  step  nearer  to  perfection. 

Four  codes  (comprised  in  one  general  code)  were 
matured  by  Mr.  Livingston's  sole  and  unassisted  la 
bors.  They  were  :  (i)  the  code  of  Crimes  and  Punish 
ments  ;  (2)  the  code  of  Procedure;  (3)  the  code  of 
Evidence ;  and  (4)  the  code  of  Reform  and  Prison 
Discipline  :  to  each  of  which  was  prefixed  a  preliminary 
title,  declaring  its  fundamental  principles,  followed  by 
a  book  of  definitions. 

[Here  followed  a  long  analysis  of  these  several  codes, 
which  is  now  omitted.  J 

This  analysis  will  enable  the  reader  to  form  an  idea 
of  the  extent  of  Mr.  Livingston's  labors,  and  of  the 
wisdom  shown  in  their  execution.  No  man  could  have 
been  better  qualified  than  he  for  the  work  he  under 
took.  A  combination  of  dissimilar  and  almost  con 
flicting  qualities  conferred  upon  him  a  peculiar  fitness 
for  the  task.  He  was  a  lawyer  equally  skilled  in  the 
technicalities  of  practice  and  in  the  subtleties  of  prin 
ciple.  Yet  he  had  not  become  so  enamored  of  the 
profession  as  to  close  his  eyes  to  its  defects.  He  saw 
at  once  its  excellence  and  its  weakness,  and  was  as 
willing  to  acknowledge  the  one  as  he  was  to  extol  the 
other.  A  profound  and  patient  thinker,  he  still  saved 
himself  from  the  abstraction  and  impracticableness  of 
the  mere  student  by  practical  habits  of  business  which 
had  trained  him  to  bold  and  decided  action.  Daily 


68  Edward  Livingston 

intercourse  with  men  had  had  the  double  effect  of 
creating  tact  and  sympathy — tact  to  discover  the  laws 
best  adapted  to  the  actual  relations  of  society,  and 
sympathy  to  infuse  into  them  the  sentiment  of  a 
broad  benevolence.  If  he  investigated  as  a  philoso 
pher,  he  recommended  as  a  man  of  the  world  ;  if 
he  felt  as  a  philanthropist,  he  acted  as  the  practician. 
Thus  he  was  prepared  for  every  kind  of  opposition, 
as  well  from  the  criticisms  of  the  learned  as  from  the 
assaults  of  the  ignorant  and  interested.  Superior 
knowledge  availed  him  in  answering  the  first,  and 
logic,  eloquence,  and  enthusiasm,  in  discomfiting  the 
second.  Fearless  but  prudent,  theoretical  and  yet 
practical,  indefatigable  in  vindication  as  well  as  in  pur 
suit,  there  was  no  hostility  he  did  not  encounter,  none, 
we  believe,  that  he  did  not  overcome. 

We  are  aware  that  many  competent  people  object  to 
the  principle  of  codification,  but  we  do  not  estimate 
their  objections  verv  highly.  They  proceed  either  from  a 
misunderstanding  of  the  subject  or  a  groundless  fear.  All 
new  things  are  received  with  caution  and  prejudice,  and 
often  the  only  objection  to  that  which  is  new,  is  the  simple 
fact  that  it  is  new,  independently  of  its  merit,  and  with 
out  regard  to  the  necessity  that  may  exist  for  its  adop 
tion.  But  such  as  these  objections  are,  we  propose  to 
answer  them  briefly  before  closing  this  discussion. 

i.  First,  then,  of  the  objection,  that  a  code  of  laws  is 
new.  If  it  be  meant  by  this,  that  everything  which  is  new 
is  mischievous,  it  applies  equally  to  every  change  in  the 
existing  order  of  things.  It  takes  for  granted  that  the 
human  intellect  has  exhausted  its  own  stores  of  thought, 
and  that  nothing  that  may  hereafter  be  struck  out  is  worthy 
of  a  wise  man's  consideration.  It  supposes  that  society 
has  already  reached  a  state  of  ultimate  perfection,  and 
that  no  modification  of  it  for  the  better  is  possible.  It 


and  his  Code.  69 

proceeds  upon  the  ground  that  the  human  race  came 
into  the  world  in  the  maturity  of  its  vigor  and  beauty, 
so  that  nothing  in  its  condition  is  susceptible  of  im 
provement.  For,  if  we  admit  the  progress  made  by  the 
human  mind  to  be  imperfect  ;  if  we  admit  the  existence 
of  social  evils  at  all ;  if  we  do  not  impute  to  our  fore 
runners  the  possession  of  the  highest  wisdom  and  the 
most  consummate  power,  we  must  also  admit  that  many 
things  are  capable  of  being  reformed.  Now,  the  truth 
is,  in  regard  to  all  new  measures,  that  the  only  real 
question  is,  not  how  long  they  may  have  been  known, 
but  what  they  promise  to  accomplish,  and  the  means 
they  possess  of  effecting  the  end.  If  they  be  found 
reasonable,  let  them  be  adopted  ;  but  if  they  be  found 
unreasonable,  attack  them  on  the  ground  of  that  de 
fect.  That  an  untried  plan  is  an  innovation  is  often, 
indeed,  the  best  reason  why  it  should  be  regarded  with 
favor.  Christianity  was  once  an  innovation,  and  be 
cause  the  moral  state  of  mankind  was  such  as  to  en 
title  it  to  that  name,  the  more  imperative  the  necessity 
for  its  advent.  The  history  of  democracy  is  the  his 
tory  of  a  series  of  innovations.  All  the  beneficent 
changes  that  we  know  of  were  at  first  esteemed  by  the 
timid  and  time-serving  as  so  many  innovations.  All 
the  loftiest  hopes  and  aspirations  of  man  are,  in  fact, 
connected  with  the  success  of  these  "innovations." 
They  are  the  pioneers  of  all  that  is  great  and  grand  in 
human  action,  and  the  pledges  of  a  glorious  advance 
ment  for  the  future. 

2.  But  written  codes,  it  is  said,  may  be  very  well  in 
theory  and  very  bad  in  practice.  Another  of  those 
commonplace  utterances  which  rest  upon  a  confusion 
of  terms  as  well  as  a  confusion  of  ideas.  What  is  meant 
by  saying  that  a  thing  may  be  very  good  in  theory  ?  If 
it  means  anything,  it  is  that  the  measure  is  both  rational 


70  Edward  Livingston 

in  its  objects  and  in  its  means  ;  otherwise  it  is  not  good 
in  theory,  and  the  question  of  its  practicability  may  be 
left  out  of  the  discussion.  Now,  in  this  matter  of  law 
reform,  it  is  evident  that  if  it  be  good  in  theory  it  must 
be  good  in  practice.  If  it  be  adapted  to  the  end  pro 
posed — that  is,  if  the  principles  it  asserts  are  wise,  just, 
and  pertinent,  suited  to  the  people  and  the  times  for 
which  they  are  intended,  then  it  cannot  fail  to  be  good 
in  practice.  But  if  it  does  not  possess  these  charac 
teristics,  then  it  is  bad  in  theory,  and  is  to  be  con 
demned  on  that  ground.  The  fact  of  being  bad  in 

practice,  is  sufficient  of  itself  to  prove  it  bad  in  theory, 

is  indeed  the  very  quality  which  makes  it  bad  in  theory. 
If,  however,  the  objectors  mean,  that  written  codes 
invariably  are  found  to  work  badly,  the  question  be 
comes  one  of  fact.  Viewing  it  as  such,  then,  we  as 
sert,  that  whenever  written  codes  have  been  used,  and 
to  the  extent  they  have  been  used,  their  practical  work 
ing  has  shown  their  superiority  to  every  other  form  of 
law.  It  is  true,  our  instances  are  few,  but  yet  suffi 
ciently  numerous  to  furnish  a  basis  for  argument.  The 
Louisiana  Code  of  Procedure  were  alone  adequate  to 
establish  the  point.  "An  experiment  in  the  occult 
sciences,"  says  Livingston,  "is  said  to  be  most  success 
fully  made,  when  the  desired  effects  have  been  pro 
duced  under  the  most  unfavorable  circumstances.  It 
is  the  same  in  legislation,  and  we  may  consider  the 
favorable  result  as  completely  ascertained;  for  an  ex 
periment  has  been  thus  made.  It  has  succeeded  in  the 
most  difficult  branch  ;  succeeded  under  every  disad 
vantage  of  imperfect  execution,  and  in  opposition  to 
professional  and  national  prejudices  ;  succeeded,  too, 
so  completely  as  to  silence  every  objection  to  the  meas 
ure  itself,  and  leaving  none  but  to  some  of  the  details 
which  more  mature  revision  may  remove."  Or  will 


and  his  Code.  71 

any  one  be  hardy  enough  to  allege,  that  the  Code  of  Na 
poleon,  the  code  to  which  more  than  thirty  millions  of 
people  have  not  looked  for  justice  altogether  in  vain 
for  nearly  half  a  century,  is  impracticable  or  inefficient? 
That  code  is  badly  constructed  in  several  respects ;  yet 
in  spite  of  its  defects,  it  fulfils  the  functions  of  a  su 
preme  law  much  more  simply,  and  quite  as  effectually, 
as  the  vaunted  Common  Law  of  England.  Suitors  ac 
quire  and  maintain  their  rights,  and  the  demands  of 
public  justice  are  satisfied  ;  and  whatever  vexations  and 
delays  grow  up  under  it  are  to  be  ascribed  to  those  fea 
tures  in  which  it  has  departed  from  the  strict  idea  of  a 
code  and  introduced  the  practices  of  the  more  ancient 
law. 

But  not  to  multiply  citations,  there  is  one  fact  we  hold 
to  be  a  complete  answer  to  the  charge  we  are  combating. 
It  is  this — that  all  modern  attempts  to  improve  the  exist 
ing  laws  are  only  so  many  approaches  to  the  formation  of 
a  code.  The  revised  statutes,  the  abridgments,  the  di 
gests,  and  the  indices  that  constitute  so  respectable  a 
part  of  a  legal  library,  are  endeavors  to  give  scattered 
and  conflicting  statutes,  rules,  and  decisions  the  pre 
cision,  the  conciseness,  and  the  method  of  a  written 
code.  They  are  efforts  to  appropriate  its  form,  if  not 
its  spirit,  and  need  merely  to  be  carried  a  little  further 
to  realize  all  that  is  contained  in  the  great  idea  of  codi 
fication.  Thus,  those  who  are  loudest  in  their  objec 
tion  to  written  and  organized  bodies  of  law,  are  among 
the  first  to  avail  themselves,  in  a  partial  and  inadequate 
degree,  of  their  advantages.  In  practice,  they  meas 
urably  confess  a  principle,  which,  in  argument,  they 
repugn. 

3.  If  it  be  rejoined,  that  these  are  attempts  to  methodize 
laws  that  are  already  known  and  interwoven  with  the 
habits  of  society,  while  the  introduction  of  a  new  sys- 


72  Edward  Livingston 

tern  would  be  attended  by  great  inconvenience  and  ex 
pense,  we  are  ready  to  meet  the  argument  on  that  issue. 
The  inconvenience  alluded  to,  we  suppose,  means  the 
inconvenience  of  learning  what  the  new  laws  are,  and 
the  expense  of  reducing  them  to  practice.  We  ac 
knowledge  both  the  trouble  and  the  cost  ;  but  we  re 
ply  that  the  trouble  and  cost  will  be  much  less  than  is 
now  involved  in  the  labor,  time,  and  money  expended 
under  the  present  system.  We  ask,  in  the  first  place, 
are  the  present  laws  known — known  to  the  people, 
known  even  to  the  judges  ?  From  the  multiplicity  of  re 
corded  decisions,  can  the  most  skilful  jurisconsult  al 
ways  extract  the  truth  ?  Does  one  man  in  a  thousand 
know  what  are  his  legal  rights,  the  means  of  ascertain 
ing  them,  or  the  modes  of  prosecuting  their  violation? 
Are  the  millions  who  are  perpetually  rising  up  to  assume 
the  responsibility  of  social  life,  informed  as  to  their  du 
ties,  and  can  they  be  informed  without  mature  study, 
or  without  feeing  counsel  ?  "It  may  safely  be  asserted, " 
says  an  eminent  authority,  "that  less  time  will  be  re 
quired  to  obtain  a  perfect  knowledge  of  any  law  that  is 
reduced  to  writing,  and  framed  with  a  tolerable  atten 
tion  to  clearness  and  method,  than  would  be  necessary 
to  learn  that  part  of  those  which  now  govern  us,  which 
is  unknown  even  to  its  professors.  But  should  it  be 
conceded  that  this  supposition  is  unfounded,  and  that 
greater  trouble  would  be  required  than  is  supposed  to 
master  the  differences  between  an  old  and  new  system, 
for  those  who  have  studied  the  former,  yet. this  can  ap 
ply  only  to  ourselves,  to  those  who  are  now  on  the  stage 
of  public  life.  But  those  who  are  just  about  to  take 
their  places  there — the  countless  succession  of  legisla 
tors,  judges,  advocates,  magistrates,  and  officers,  who 
are  to  replace  them! — the  multitude  even  in  the  present 
day,  who  have  not  yet  studied  the  present  laws,  but 


and  his  Code.  73 

who  are  bound  to  obey  them  ! — the  millions  who  are 
to  follow  them  in  the  lapse  of  those  ages  which  every 
good  citizen  must  wish  his  country  and  its  institutions 
to  endure  ! — is  the  curse  of  bad  laws,  and  the  odious 
and  painful  task  of  learning  them,  to  be  entailed  on 
these  forever,  to  save  ourselves  the  task  of  a  few  days 
or  weeks  mental  application  ?" 

4.  A  more  considerable  objection  to  the  code,  how 
ever,  is  urged  by  those  who  represent,  that  if  a  new  system 
were  established,  judicial  decisions  would  still  be  re 
quired  to  settle  the  meaning  of  terms,  and  to  declare 
the  application  of  principles,  which  in  a  few  years 
would  accumulate  a  vast  mass  of  legal  learning.  Ref 
erence  is  made,  in  proof  of  the  assertion,  to  the  codes 
of  Justinian  and  Napoleon,  under  each  of  which  the 
commentaries,  glosses,  and  decrees  have  grown  to  an 
immeasurable  magnitude. 

True  :  but  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  various  bodies 
of  law  prepared  by  Justinian  were  the  merest  approxi 
mation  to  what  is  now  comprehended  in  the  idea  of  a 
code.  His  Code  was  only  a  collection  of  the  imperial 
statutes  from  Hadrian  to  his  own  time,  that  were  thought 
worth  preserving  ;  the  Institutes  were  compends — ad 
mirable,  it  is  true,  but  still  compends,  of  the  more 
ancient  laws  ;  the  Pandects  were  voluminous  abridg 
ments  of  the  decisions  of  praetors  and  the  opinions  of 
legal  sages,  without  precision  and  logical  arrangement, 
abounding  in  contradictory  doctrines,  and  full  of  the 
very  uncertainty  which  was  their  object  to  avoid  ;  while 
all  were  vitiated  by  the  fatal  defect  of  admitting  a 
recourse  to  an  authority  out  of  themselves — the  author 
ity  of  the  Emperor.  An  analogous  fault  is  to  be 
remarked  in  the  Code  of  Napoleon.  Explicit  as  it  is 
in  many  of  its  definitions,  and  felicitous  as  it  is  in 
arrangement,  it  recognizes  the  doctrine  of  usage,  and 
4 


74  fdward  Livingston. 

thus  opens  an  avenue  for  the  advent  of  the  whole  juris 
prudence  of  precedent  and  decrees. 

Now  a  true  code  would  altogether  avoid  sources  of 
error  like  these.  The  great,  evil  we  have  found  in  the 
English  law  is,  'that  it  tolerates  this  reference  to  the 
decrees  of  judges.  Nearly  all  the  uncertainty  with 
which  it  is  chargeable,  has  its  origin  in  this  single  defect. 
In  recognizing  the  determination  of  its  ministers  as  an 
authority  equal  to  itself,  its  worst  features  originate. 
Law  loses  the  character  given  it  by  the  definition  of 
Blackstone,  as  "a  rule  of  action  prescribed  by  the 
supreme  power  of  the  State,"  and  becomes  an  unknown 
and  variable  jumble  of  dicta.  It  is  no  longer  "  a  rule 
of  action,"  since  it  sleeps  in  silence  in  the  heart  of  the 
judge,  until  some  case  shall  arise  to  call  it  into  existence ; 
it  is  not  "prescribed,"  inasmuch  as  it  is  not  known 
before  it  is  applied,  thus,  in  many  instances  assuming 
an  ex  post  facto  operation;  and  "the  supreme  power 
of  the  State"  has  nothing  to  do  with  this  jurisprudence 
of  construction  and  decrees,  which  is  confined  exclu 
sively  to  the  courts,  that  in  theory  are  supposed  to  be 
the  mere  interpreters  of  the  law.  A  true  code  would 
find  a  remedy  for  this,  in  that  it  is  a  something  entire  in 
itself;  in  its  parts,  and  as  a  whole,  it  is  complete;  or 
should  the  experience  of  its  practical  working  discover 
points  in  which  it  could  be  improved,  it  provides  regu 
larly  for  its  own  systematic  amendment  till  it  shall  reach 
the  highest  possible  perfection.  Not  the  wanton  caprice 
or  prejudices  of  che  judge — not  his  sinister  motives  or 
base  subjection  to  prevailing  influences — no  prevari 
cating  and  self-constiiuted  tribunal — but  the  legitimate 
agents  of  the  community,  the  only  proper  law-devising 
and  law-establishing  power,  are  made  the  arbiters  of 
rules  in  which  the  properties,  happiness,  and  lives  of 
the  people  are  involved. 


JOURNALISM.* 

IREAT  is  Journalism,"  exclaims  Mr.  Carlyle, 
in  his  rhapsodical  but  striking  way,  "  Great  is 
Journalism.  Is  not  every  able  editor  a  ruler 
of  the  world,  being  a  persuader  of  it  :  though  self- 
elected,  yet  sanctioned  by  the  sale  of  his  numbers  ? 
whom  indeed  the  world  has  the  readiest  method  of  de 
posing,  should  need  be — that  of  merely  doing  nothing  to 
him  ;  which  ends  in  starvation."  Again,  says  the  same 
original  writer:  "There  is  no  church,  sayest  thou  ? 
The  voice  of  prophecy  has  gone  dumb  !  This  is  even 
what  I  dispute  ;  but  in  any  case,  hast  thou  not  still 
preaching  enough  ?  A  preaching  friar  settles  himself  in 
every  village  ;  and  builds  a  pulpit,  which  he  calls  news 
paper.  Therefrom  he  preaches  what  most  momentous 
doctrine  is  in  him,  for  man's  salvation  ;  and  dost  not 
thou  listen  and  believe  ?" 

We  cite  these  passages,  because  they  recognize  the 
fact  that  Journalism  is  a  distinct  profession,  exerting  an 
influence  over  society  like  that  of  the  king  over  his  sub 
jects,  or  of  the  preacher  over  his  hearers.  Much  as 
has  been  said  of  the  power  of  the  press,  it  is  a  power 
that  has  never  yet  been  measured.  Let  us,  then,  de 
tain  the  reader  with  a  remark  or  two  upon  the  functions 
of  editorship,  and  the  place  it  holds  among  the  moral 
agencies  of  the  world. 

*  From  the  Democratic  Review,  Jan., 


/  6  Journalism. 

No  man  requires  a  larger  range  of  intellect,  more  va 
ried  acquirements,  or  greater  strength  of  character,  than 
the  conductor  of  a  public  journal.  Of  course,  we  al 
lude  to  one  who  acts  with  a  full  sense  of  the  dignity  and 
worth  of  his  calling,  and  a  conscientious  desire  to  dis 
charge  its  duties.  Neither  statesman,  lawyer,  nor  di 
vine  moves  in  a  broader  sphere,  or  has  more  occasion 
for  the  use  of  the  noblest  faculties  both  of  mind  and 
heart.  The  journalist  stands  in  immediate  contact  with 
the  public  mind  ;  he  gives  a  tone  to  public  sentiment  ; 
he  is  the  guardian  and  guide  of  public  morals.  Thou 
sands  of  men,  each  morning  and  evening,  listen  to  his 
voice,  are  moved  by  his  persuasions,  are  chastised  by 
his  rebukes,  or  corrupted  by  his  license.  He  may  ele 
vate  the  bad,  or  degrade  the  good — he  can  stimulate  the 
worst  or  the  best  passions. 

His  influence  again  differs  from  that  of  others  not 
only  in  its  directness  but  its  persistency.  While  theirs 
is  confined  to  particular  and  distant  occasions,  his  acts 
incessantly.  The  orator  agitates  only  while  he  is  speak 
ing  ;  the  preacher  is  hemmed  in  by  the  walls  of  his 
church  and  the  limits  of  a  Sabbath-day  ;  the  statesman 
seldom  steps  out  of  his  bureau  ;  the  man  of  science  is 
fixed  among  his  retorts  and  crucibles  ;  and  the  teacher's 
sway  is  confined  to  his  school-room.  But  the  editor  is 
universally  as  well  as  perpetually  at  work.  As  the 
mails  carry  his  speculations  from  one  city  to  another, 
his  action  spreads  like  the  waves  of  a  pool,  and  before 
the  last  ripple  has  subsided,  the  waters  at  the  centre 
are  again  disturbed.  Even  while  he  sleeps,  his  thoughts 
are  awake,  entering  other  minds,  and  moulding  them 
to  good  or  evil. 

"  They  rest  not — stay  not, — on,  still  on  they  wing 
Their  flight,"— 


Journalism.  77 

and  whether  benign  or  pestiferous,  produce  their  inevit 
able  impressions.  Says  the  adage,  "  Give  me  the 
making  of  the  songs  of  a  people,  and  I  will  make  their 
characters  ;"  with  greater  propriety  one  might  say, 
"Give  me  the  making  of  the  newspapers  of  a  nation, 
and  I  will  make  its  minds."  The  newspaper  is  every 
where, — in  the  counting-house  and  in  the  parlor,  in  the 
bar-room  and  in  the  bedroom,  on  board  the  steamboat 
and  in  the  student's  chamber.  All  subjects  are  discussed 
in  it ;  all  classes  of  men  read  it ;  and  all  men,  to  an 
extent,  are  affected  by  what  it  contains.  "  He,"  says 
one  of  the  class,*  "  should  have  a  head  cool,  clear,  and 
sagacious  ;  a  heart  warm  and  benevolent ;  a  nice  sense 
of  justice  ;  honesty  that  no  temptation  could  corrupt  ; 
intrepidity  that  no  danger  could  intimidate  ;  and  inde 
pendence  superior  to  every  consideration  of  mere  in 
terest,  enmity,  or  friendship.  He  should  possess  the 
power  of  diligent  application,  and  be  capable  of  en 
during  great  fatigue.  He  should  have  a  temperament 
so  happily  mingled,  that  while  he  easily  kindled  at  pub 
lic  error  or  injustice  his  indignation  should  never  trans 
gress  the  bounds  of  judgment,  but,  in  its  strongest  ex 
pression^  show  that  smoothness  and  amenity  which  the 
language  of  choler  always  lacks.  He  should,  in  short, 
be  such  a  man  as  a  contemporary  writer  described 
that  sturdy  democrat,  old  Andrew  Fletcher  of  Saltoun — 
'  a  gentleman,  steady  in  his  principles  ;  of  nice  honor  ; 
abundance  of  learning ;  brave  as  the  sword  he  wears, 
and  bold  as  a  lion  ;  a  sure  friend  and  irreconcilable 
enemy ;  who  would  lose  his  life  readily  to  serve  his 
country,  and  would  not  do  a  base  thing  to  save  it.' 
This  is  the  beau  ideal  of  a  conductor  of  a  public  news 
paper." 

*  William   Leggett. 


78  Journalism. 

But  it  is  an  ideal  that,  like  most  of  the  ideals  of  men 
of  ardent  temperament,  has  been  seldom  if  ever  real 
ized.  In  casting  our  eyes  over  the  history  of  newspa 
per  literature,  we  scarcely  recall  a  man  who  has  fulfilled 
the  high  character  that  pertains  to  the  profession.  There 
have  been  divines  to  whom  Cowper's  beautiful  descrip 
tion  of  St.  Paul  might  well  be  applied — Fletchers, 
Halls,  Brainards,  and  Channings  ;  there  have  been 
Mansfields,  Romillys,  and  Marshalls,  in  law ;  Garricks, 
Siddonses,  Kembles,  and  Talmas,  as  actors  ;  there  have 
been  Boerhaaves,  Jenners,  Goods,  and  Bells,  in  physics  ; 
there  have  been  Boyles,  Newtons,  and  Bacons,  in 
science  ;  and  Caesars,  Bonapartes,  and  Washingtons,  in 
war  ;  in  short,  in  all  departments  of  intellectual  exer 
tion  there  have  been  crowds  of  notable  men  ;  but  no 
where  on  the  lists  of  great  or  distinguished  persons  do 
we  find  the  name  of  one  whose  celebrity  has  been  ac 
quired  in  the  walk  of  the  Journalist.  Carrel  has  pro 
duced  an  impression  in  France,  Fonblanque  in  Eng 
land,  and  Leggett  in  the  United  States,  but  it  has  been 
an  impression  as  fleeting  as  that  of  fallen  leaves  ;  neither 
of  them  can  be  said  to  have  made  a  permanent  reputa 
tion. 

How  are  we  to  account  for  this  extraordinary  fact  ? 
Why  is  it  that  a  means  so  intimately  connected  with  hu 
man  happiness  as  the  press,  so  powerful  over  social  is 
sues  and  human  destinies,  has  so  seldom  been  used  by 
men  of  the  loftiest  endowments  ? 

It  is  not  because  the  sphere  of  the  Journalist  is  too 
contracted  for  a  noble  ambition  ;  for  it  is  a  sphere  as 
wide  as  the  universe  of  intelligence,  and  as  durable  as 
language.  As  a  means  of  swaying  the  minds  of  men, 
which  is  the  essence  of  power,  as  an  instrument  for  ele 
vating  society,  which  is  the  object  of  goodness,  as  a 
vehicle  for  the  expression  and  enforcement  of  thought, 


Journalism.  79 

the  press  is  without  an  equal  among  all  the  constituted 
agencies  of  human  utterance.  No  voice  reaches  so  far 
as  the  voice  of  the  press  ;  no  book  arrests  a  wider  atten 
tion  or  penetrates  a  deeper  retirement. 

It  is  not  because  the  subjects  with  which  newspaper 
writing  is  mostly  occupied,  are  temporary  and  incidental. 
That  species  of  composition  is  not  confined  to  chron 
icling  events,  or  to  fighting  the  battles  of  transient  parties. 
Higher  objects  often  engage  it.  The  instruction  of  so 
ciety  in  the  nature  of  government,  the  inculcation  of 
great  principles,  the  application  of  judicious  criticism, 
the  development  and  control  of  social  tendencies,  the 
direction  of  public  opinion,  the  exposition  of  public 
characters,  the  prosecution  of  grand  moral  reforms,  and 
the  correction  of  prevailing  iniquities  and  frauds,  are 
among  its  principal  functions.  The  editor  is  stationed, 
as  a  sentinel  upon  the  watch-towers  of  society,  to  warn 
it  of  the  approach  of  dangers  ;  to  summon  it  to  battle, 
and  to  cheer  it  on  to  success. 

Nor  is  it  because  there  is  anything  in  the  condition 
of  the  press  to  cripple  its  activity  and  arrest  its  influence. 
No  better  condition  could  be  required  for  it  than  ob 
tains  in  this  country.  It  is  founded  on  a  basis  of  per 
fect  freedom.  Liberty  of  action,  which  it  is  the  aim  of 
the  democratic  doctrine  to  introduce  into  all  kinds  of 
business,  it  has  enjoyed  from  the  beginning,  Govern 
ment  has  never  dared  to  impose  a  restraint  upon  it;  it 
has  been  exposed  to  the  stimulus  of  competition  ;  it 
has  received  favor  from  all  political  parties.  Whoever 
may  have  fancied  that  he  possessed  talent  enough  to  un 
dertake  a  public  journal,  has  been  at  liberty  to  do  so, 
and  he  has  had  the  opportunity  of  displaying  all  the 
enthusiasm  and  talent  that  he  could  bring  to  the  task. 

We  must  look  elsewhere,  then,  for  the  causes  of  the 
singular  fact  to  which  we  refer.  We  must  look,  not  so 


8o  Journalism. 

much  to  journalists  themselves,  as  to  the  community  in 
which  they  live.  It  is  because  so  low  a  standard  has 
been  established  in  regard  to  journalism,  that  so  few 
men  of  the  strongest  intellect  and  character  have  taken 
it  up  ;  they  have  sought  distinction  in  other  spheres  less 
influential,  but  supposed  to  be  more  honorable.  Be 
cause  society  has  not  required  more,  more  has  not  been 
done.  Journalists  are  what  society  has  made  them  ; 
if  they  fall  short  of  the  lofty  dignity  of  their  vo 
cation,  it  is  because  society  falls  short  in  its  demands. 
Johnson,  in  his  prologue,  says  that  "they  who  live  to 
please,  must  please  to  live,"  which  is  especially  true  of 
the  press.  It  has  been  regarded  as  a  mere  agent  for 
pleasing  society,  and  therefore  it  has  aspired  to  no 
higher  function.  It  has  failed  to  perceive  its  real  value  ; 
it  has  failed  in  asserting  its  claims  ;  it  has  failed  in  dis 
charging  its  duties  as  an  instructor ;  it  has  failed  in  as 
serting  the  moral  power  of  which  it  is  capable. 

But  its  conductors,  we  repeat,  are  not  so  much  to 
blame  for  this  result,  as  its  patrons,  as  they  are  called — • 
the  public.  True,  it  has  been  courted  by  some,  and 
feared  by  others — courted  by  the  ambitious  and  feared 
by  the  timid  :  yet,  while  courted  and  feared,  it  has  been 
neglected  and  despised.  Very  little  discrimination  has 
marked  the  public  judgment  of  its  character.  So  long 
as  it  could  be  made  to  minister  to  prevailing  prejudices, 
so  long  as  it  could  be  turned  to  the  purposes  of  party, 
so  long  as  it  lent  itself  to  the  cause  of  demagogues,  so 
long  and  no  longer  has  it  met  with  favor.  Discerning, 
genuine,  and  hearty  approbation  for  independence,  in 
tegrity,  and  talent,  it  has  seldom  or  never  received. 

A  sort  of  double  and  inconsistent  conduct  has  been 
expected  of  editors.  While  they  have  been  solicited  to 
furnish  aid  to  all  kinds  of  partial  schemes,  they  have 
yet  been  blamed  for  a  want  of  fidelity  to  principle ; 


Journalism.  8 1 

while  the  whole  strength  of  great  parties  is  brought  to 
bear  upon  them  to  secure  their  aid  or  crush  their  oppo 
sition,  they  have  yet  been  derided  for  suppleness  of 
purpose  and  pliancy  of  doctrine  ;  while  every  man  who 
has  an  object  to  accomplish,  besets  them  with  seductions 
and  promises  of  reward,  they  have  yet  been  scorned  for 
venality  and  time-serving.  A  high  unvarying  moral 
test  has  never  been  applied  to  them.  When  a  man  of 
lofty  faith  and  stern  virtue  has  arisen  among  them, 
when  he  has  shown  a  disposition  to  discuss  questions 
in  the  light  of  great  principles,  when  he  has  refused  to 
listen  to  the  whispers  or  move  at  the  beck  of  cliques 
and  factions,  when  he  has  regarded  politics  as  the  most 
important  branch  of  morals,  and  sought  to  acquit  him 
self  of  the  duties  of  his  calling,  with  a  nice  regard  to 
truth  and  conscience,  how  has  he  been  received  by  the 
community  ?  As  a  worthy,  noble,  fearless  man  ?  As  a 
patriot  who  deserved  well  of  his  fellows  ?  As  a  Christian 
filled  with  a  strong  sense  of  the  responsibilities  of  hu 
man  existence  ?  Far  otherwise.  Hostility  and  con 
tempt,  rather,  have  been  his  rewards.  His  professed 
friends  have  dropped  away  from  him  ;  his  enemies  have 
redoubled  and  sharpened  their  abuse,  until  a  strong 
public  opinion  was  aroused  against  him,  and  he  was 
compelled  in  the  end,  from  sheer  want  of  support,  to 
relinquish  his  pursuit,  and  seek  in  some  other  employ 
ment  the  means  of  subsistence. 

Can  we  forget  the  career  of  the  lamented  Leggett  ? 
There  was  a  man  who,  during  one  of  the  most  exciting 
and  critical  periods  of  our  political  experience,  pursued 
a  line  of  determined  and  intrepid  honesty.  A  course 
of  corrupt  legislation,  openly  defended  by  one  party, 
and  connived  at  by  a  large  portion  of  the  other,  had 
fastened  upon  the  people  a  system  of  finance  and  bank 
ing  which  was  fast  undermining  their  liberties  and 


82  Jo  u  rnalism . 

morals.  The  firm  old  soldier-statesman,  who  was  then 
President,  more  sagacious  than  many  of  his  supporters, 
more  honest  than  any  of  his  opponents,  had  given  the 
first  blow  to  the  insidious  evil.  After  a  long  and  des 
perate  contest,  he  succeeded  ;  and  yet  it  was  only  by  a 
partial  success.  Mr.  Leggett,  who  had  stood  side  by 
side  with  him  in  the  most  trying  positions  of  the  fight, 
saw,  even  in  the  moment  of  victory,  that  the  triumph 
was  not  completely  achieved.  The  enemy,  overcome 
by  the  energies  of  the  General  Government,  was  still 
acting  in  full  strength  under  the  protection  of  the  in 
dividual  States.  That  enemy,  he  conceived,  was  to  be 
attacked  in  his  strongholds  there  ;  instant  to  his  con 
victions  of  duty,  he  began  a  vigorous  assault  ;  neither 
persuasion  on  one  hand,  nor  persecution  on  the  other, 
could  induce  him  to  soften  his  ponderous  blows  ;  and 
day  after  day  he  aroused  the  public  mind  with  dis 
cussions  full  of  strong  thought  and  eloquent  invective. 
What  was  the  result?  Desertion  and  poverty  for  the 
time — to  be  followed,  but  not  till  he  was  cold  in  his 
grave,  with  monumental  honors  and  eulogy. 

The  fault,  we  cannot  too  often  repeat,  is  with  the 
community.  What  they  ask  for,  they  receive.  If  their 
praise  and  money  are  showered  upon  those  who  pander 
to  a  depraved  taste,  they  must  expect  depraved  and 
worthless  writers.  But  if  they  will  recognize  the  claims 
of  a  better  order  of  men,  such  an  order  will  imme 
diately  arise.  There  cannot  be  a  demand  in  this  branch 
of  political  economy  without  a  supply. 

i.  The  community  should  require  its  editors  to  be 
intellectual  men.  By  this  we  mean,  men  who  should 
possess  both  power  of  thought  and  facility  of  ex 
pression.  The  first  is  needed  because  it  is  incumbent 
upon  them  to  grapple  with  difficult  questions  ;  the  sec 
ond,  because  they  are  to  make  those  questions  plain  to 


Jo  u  rnalism .  8  3 

minds  of  every  cast.  All  that  interests  men  as  mem 
bers  of  a  social  and  political  body — the  measures  of 
parties,  the  relations  of  States,  the  merits  of  laws,  the 
pretensions  of  artists,  the  schemes  of  projectors,  the 
movements  of  reformers,  the  characters  of  politicians — • 
all  are,  in  turn,  themes  of  newspaper  controversy  and 
remark.  Politics,  international  and  municipal  law, 
political  economy,  moral  and  social  science,  and  the 
art  of  reading  individual  character,  must  be  understood 
by  the  editor — and  not  only  understood,  but  explained. 
He  must  have  that  clear  insight  into  general  principles, 
and  that  familiarity  with  details,  which  will  enable  him 
to  speak  with  clearness,  originality,  and  decision. 

Topics,  moreover,  are  often  sprung  upon  him  with 
the  suddenness  of  surprise — topics  in  which  are  in 
volved  the  happiness  of  immense  numbers  of  people, 
who  look  to  him  for  information  and  guidance.  His 
faculties,  fully  prepared  and  rightly  disciplined,  must  be 
at  his  command.  He  must  stand  ready,  with  argument, 
with  illustration,  with  eloquence,  to  awaken  the  dull,  to 
convince  the  doubting,  to  move  the  inert,  and  to  instruct 
and  interest  the  more  enlightened.  But,  to  do  this  ef 
fectually,  he  must  be  at  once  a  patient  thinker,  a  pro 
found  scholar,  and  a  practised  writer.  He  must  have 
accomplished  his  mind  by  the  observation  of  mankind, 
by  the  reading  of  books,  and  by  habits  of  quick  and 
appropriate  expression.  He  must,  above  all,  be  pene 
trated  by  that  deep  Christian  philosophy  which  estimates 
all  questions  in  their  bearing  upon  the  most  exalted 
and  permanent  interests  of  human  nature. 

2.  The  community  should  require  of  its  editors  that 
they  be  firm  and  independent  men.  Force  of  will  is 
no  less  necessary  to  them  than  greatness  of  thought. 
Few  men  have  more  temptations  to  an  expedient  and 
vacillating  course.  Regarded  by  many,  and  often  re- 


84  Journalism. 

garding  themselves,  as  the  mere  hacks  of  party,  or 
mere  instruments  of  gratification  to  prevailing  passions, 
they  are  not  expected  to  exhibit  a  fervent  zeal  in  the 
prosecution  of  great  ends.  Like  advocates  paid  by  a 
client  to  carry  a  particular  point,  they  are  supposed  to 
have  fulfilled  their  obligations  when  they  have  made  the 
worse  appear  the  better  reason.  In  many  instances,  if 
they  have  succeeded  in  embarrassing  an  adversary,  if 
they  have  covered  an  opponent  with  ridicule,  if  they 
have  given  a  plausible  aspect  to  falsehood,  if  they  have 
assisted  a  schemer  in  imposing  upon  credulous  or  igno 
rant  people,  if  they  have  been  faithful  to  the  interests  of 
their  employers,  they  are  clapped  upon  the  shoulders  as 
serviceable  fellows,  and  rewarded  with  a  double  allow 
ance  of  governmental  or  mercantile  patronage.  The 
notion  that  the  press  has  a  worthier  destiny,  seems 
hardly  to  cross  their  minds.  That  it  should  become  a 
fountain  of  truth  and  moral  influerice  ;  that  it  should 
take  its  stand  upon  some  high  and  good  principle,  to 
assert  it  boldly,  in  the  face  of  all  opposition  ;  that  it 
should  strive  to  carry  it  out  with  the  earnestness  of  a 
missionary,  with  the  self-denial  of  a  martyr,  despising 
as  well  the  bribes  of  those  who  would  seduce  it,  as  the 
threats  of  those  who  would  terrify  it,  acknowledging  no 
allegia'nce  to  any  power  but  justice — in  a  word,  be 
willing  to  face  danger  and  death  in  the  discharge  of 
duty — is  an  intrepidity  which,  we  fear,  to  most  of  the 
managers  of  public  journals  would  seem  to  the  last  de 
gree  chimerical.  Yet  it  is  an  end  for  which  they  should 
strive.  No  less  than  this  should  society  require  of  them  ; 
nothing  less  than  this  can  render  them  worthy  of  the 
trust  which  is  committed  to  their  keeping. 

3.  Journalists,  again,  must  be  required  to  imbue 
themselves  with  a  just  and  Christian  spirit.  Few  things 
are  more  to  be  deplored  than  the  low  tone,  the  unkind 


Journalism.  85 

feeling  which  characterizes  their  intercourse  with  each 
other.  We  do  not  speak  merely  of  those  flagrant  viola 
tions  of  decency  which  degrade  the  lower  class  of 
journals.  We  speak  of  the  puerility,  the  violence,  and 
the  want  of  justice,  which  even  the  most  respectable 
journals  exhibit ;  we  speak  of  their  proneness  to  distort 
and  to  exaggerate,  of  their  recklessness  of  fair-dealing, 
of  their  want  of  candor,  and  of  their  base  subservience 
to  particular  classes.  Indeed,  so  frequent  have  been 
their  offences,  in  these  respects,  that  their  dishonesty 
has  almost  passed  into  a  proverb.  "I  only,"  said  Jef 
ferson,  ''believe  the  advertisements  of  a  newspaper;" 
to  which  another  distinguished  man  added,  "and  he 
ought  not  to  have  believed  them."  "He  lies  like  a 
newspaper,"  would  not  be  a  far-fetched  comparison. 
We  are  aware  that  it  is  urged  in  extenuation  of  these 
faults,  that  they  are  to  be  ascribed  to  the  circumstances 
of  haste  and  confusion  in  which  daily  editors  write  ; 
we  know  it  is  alleged  that  in  other  pursuits,  law  and 
commerce,  for  instance,  the  average  honesty,  of  those 
who  follow  them  is  not  greater  than  that  of  journalists  : 
but,  with  all  these  palliations,  with  every  wish  to  deal 
charitably,  we  must  say  that  a  large  amount  of  moral 
aberration  remains  against  them  which  admits  of  no  ex 
cuse.  What !  shall  we  be  told,  because  a  man  writes  in 
haste,  that  he  must  therefore  write  falsely  ? — that  because 
lawyers  and  merchants  fall  below  the  standard  of  virtue, 
therefore  editors  should  be  allowed  to  do  the  same, — 
editors,  whose  influence  is  so  much  more  extensive, 
whose  duties  are  so  much  more  important  ?  It  is  a 
shallow  defence.  Better  relinquish  their  profession  for 
ever,  than  sacrifice  to  it  their  integrity.  Better  drop  the 
pen,  and  take  up  the  axe  or  the  hammer,  than  wield  the 
former  only  to  sap  and  extinguish  public  morals  !  No  ! 
we  demand  a  more  exalted  morality  at  their  hands. 


86  Jo  u  rnalism . 

When  a  man  assumes  to  direct  the  opinions  and  form 
the  characters  of  his  contemporaries,  when  he  volunta 
rily  places  himself  in  the  attitude  of  a  leader  of  the 
general  mind,  he  should  be  compelled,  by  the  force  of 
public  sentiment,  to  cherish  habits  of  the  strictest  ac 
curacy  and  honor.  We  require  of  the  preacher  of  the 
pulpit,  that  he  should  not  degrade  his  office  by  incon 
sistencies  of  conduct ;  can  we  require  less  of  the  preacher 
of  the  press  ?  Should  a  Channing,  or  a  Hawkes,  or  a 
Dewey,  or  a  Hughes,  act  in  a  manner  derogatory  to 
their  sacred  calling,  would  society  overlook  it?  If  a 
magistrate  on  the  bench  pollutes  the  ermine  he  wears, 
do  we  admit  of  any  apology  for  his  venality  or  corrup 
tion?  Should  a  Taney,  or  a  Story,  or  a  Baldwin,  or  the 
meanest  functionary  of  a  county  court,  accept  bribes 
from  the  parties  to  a  suit,  or  be  intimidated  by  popular 
clamor,  or  swayed  in  his  decisions  by  personal  feeling, 
could  he  avert  disgrace  ?  Could  any  circumstance  of 
his  position — press  of  business,  want  of  time,  haste — 
be  pleaded  in  defence  of  his  crime  ?  Why,  then,  should 
we  excuse  similar  defections  in  those  who  occupy  higher 
places,  and  whose  truth,  consistency,  and  justice  are 
even  more  necessary  than  theirs  to  the  good  order,  virtue, 
and  happiness  of  society  ? 

We  have  spoken  freely  of  the  present  condition  of 
the  press  :  we  have  spoken  with  equal  freedom  of  what 
it  might  become.  It  is  in  no  censorious  spirit  that  we 
have  pointed  to  its  failings  :  it  is  with  a  spirit  of  benev 
olence  and  hope  that  we  have  indicated  its  duty.  We 
are  sorry  that  our  strictures  are  deserved,  but  we  are 
glad  to  know  that  instances  exist  in  which  they  are  in 
applicable.  It  gives  us  pleasure  to  acknowledge  that 
within  the  last  few  years  the  character  of  the  American 
press  has  greatly  improved.  Were  it  not  invidious,  we 
could  point  to  editors  who,  to  the  best  of  their  ability, 


Jou  rnalism .  8  7 

have  striven  to  realize  the  ideal  which  we  have  depicted. 
We  could  refer  to  a  Bryant,  foregoing  the  applause  that 
the  world  would  willingly  render  to  his  great  poetic 
talent  and  individual  character,  to  become  an  example 
of  the  true,  accomplished,  unyielding  editor ; — to  a 
Brownson,  who  prefers  the  fame  of  a  candid,  fearless 
writer,  to  the  seductions  of  clerical  supremacy ; — and 
to  several  others,  still  young  and  obscure,  to  whom  the 
emoluments  and  honors  of  professional  and  political 
distinction  have  no  blandishments,  in  comparison  with 
those  of  becoming,  as  journalists,  upright  advocates  of 
all  that  is  good.  But  our  object  is  not  personal.  We 
wish  only  to  rescue  Journalism  from  its  infidelity  to 
itself,  and  from  the  indifference  and  contempt  of  the 
public.  We  wish  only  to  assert  its  claims,  to  vindicate 
its  dignity,  to  exhort  it  to  do  its  duty. 

It  is  among  the  cheering  signs  of  the  times  that 
young  men  of  education  and  talent,  who  have  been 
accustomed  to  crowd  the  professions  of  law,  medicine, 
and  theology,  are  many  of  them  now  directing  their 
energies  to  the  business  of  editorship  and  popular  in 
struction.  The  growing  demand  for  newspapers,  for 
cheap  books,  for  literary  and  scientific  lectures,  is  a 
proof  that  the  love  of  knowledge  is  spreading  through 
all  classes  ;  that  the  treasures  of  philosophy  and  poetry 
are  no  longer  to  be  shut  up  in  rare  caskets,  as  the  pos 
session  of  the  few  ;  that  the  general  mind,  too  long 
satisfied  with  low  and  sensual  delights,  is  seeking 
for  higher  aliment.  The  mass  of  men  are  availing 
themselves  of  the  means  of  improvement  which  a  con 
dition  of  freedom  furnishes,  and  call  for  an  increased 
number  of  instructors  and  guides.  Many  who  are 
competent  to  the  task  are  answering  the  call.  Already 
they  constitute  a  considerable  body.  They  are  march 
ing  forward  to  scatter  the  seeds  of  good  or  evil.  It  is 


88  Journalism, 

important  that  their  movement  should  take  a  right  di 
rection,  for,  if  they  are  animated  by  the  right  spirit,  no 
one  is  able  to  calculate  the  good  that  will  be  accom 
plished.  Let  them  be  true  to  the  cause  of  liberty, 
justice,  refinement,  and  progress,  and  they  will  give  an 
incalculable  impulse  to  the  upward  and  onward  march 
of  society.  But  let  them  fail  in  this,  let  them  be  false 
to  their  high  trusts,  and  we  know  of  no  class  of  men 
whose  guilt  would  be  more  deservedly  deep  and  dam 
ning. 


JOHN  JAMES  AUDUBON.* 

"That  cheerful  one,  who  knoweth  all 
The  songs  of  all  the  winged  choristers, 
And  in  one  sequence  of  melodious  sound 
Pours  all  their  music." — Southey's  Madoc  in  Aztlan. 

FEW  years  ago,  there  arrived  at  the  hotel, 
erected  near  Niagara  Falls,  an  odd-looking 
man,  whose  appearance  and  deportment  were 
quite  in  contrast  to  those  of  the  crowds  of  well-dressed 
and  polished  figures  which  adorned  that  celebrated  re 
sort.  He  seemed  just  to  have  come  out  of  the  woods. 
His  dress  of  leather  stood  dreadfully  in  need  of  repair, 
apparently  not  having  felt  the  touch  of  laundress  or 
needlewoman  for  many  a  long  month.  A  worn-out 
blanket,  that  might  have  served  for  a  bed,  was  buckled 
to  his  shoulders ;  a  large  knife  hung  on  one  side, 
balanced  by  a  long  rusty  tin  box  on  the  other ;  and  his 
beard,  uncropped,  tangled,  and  coarse,  fell  down  upon 
his  bosom,  as  if  to  counterpoise  the  weight  of  thick, 
black  hair  that  curled  about  his  shoulders.  This  strange 
being,  to  the  spectators  seemingly  half-civilized,  half- 
savage,  had  a  quick  glancing  eye,  an  elastic  firm  step, 
and  a  sharp  face  that  promised  to  cut  its  way  through 
the  cane-brakes,  both  of  society  and  the  wilderness. 
He  pushed  into  the  sitting-room,  unstrapped  his  little 

*  From  the  Democratic  Re-view,  May,  1842. 


90  John  James  Audubon. 

burden,  looked  round  for  the  landlord,  and  then 
modestly  asked  for  breakfast.  The  host  at  first  drew 
back  with  an  evident  repugnance  from  the  apparition 
which  thus  proposed  to  intrude  its  uncouth  form  among 
the  genteeler  visitors  ;  but  a  word  whispered  in  his  ear 
speedily  removed  his  doubts.  The  stranger  took  his 
place  among  the  company,  some  staring,  some  shrug 
ging,  and  some  even  laughing  outright.  Yet,  there  was 
more  in  that  single  man  than  in  all  the  rest  of  the  throng. 
An  American  Woodsman,  as  he  called  himself — a  true, 
genuine  son  of  nature,  he  had  been  entertained  with 
distinction  at  the  tables  of  princes  ;  learned  societies,  to 
which  Cuvier  and  his  like  belonged,  had  bowed  to  wel 
come  his  entrance  ;  kings  had  been  complimented  when 
he  spoke  to  them  ;  in  short,  he  was  one  whose  fame 
will  be  growing  brighter,  when  the  fashionables  who 
laughed  at  him,  and  many  even  much  greater  than  they, 
shall  have  perished.  From  every  hill-top,  and  every 
deep  shady  grove,  the  birds  will  sing  his  name.  The 
little  wren  will  pipe  it  with  her  matin  hymn  about  our 
houses  ;  the  oriole  carol  it  from  the  slender  grasses  of 
the  meadows ;  the  turtle-dove  roll  it  through  the  secret 
forests  ;  the  many-voiced  mocking-bird  pour  it  along 
the  evening  air ;  and  the  imperial  eagle,  as  he  sits  in  his 
craggy  home,  far  up  the  blue  mountains,  will  scream  it 
to  the  tempests  and  the  stars.  He  was  John  James 
Audubon,  the  Ornithologist. 

Mr.  Carlyle,  in  his  book  about  Heroes,  has  given  us 
the  heroic  manifestation  of  human  nature  in  a  variety 
of  aspects.  He  has  told  us  of  the  Hero  as  divinity  ; 
of  the  Hero  as  prophet ;  of  the  Hero  as  poet ;  of  the 
Hero  as  priest ;  of  the  Hero  as  man  of  letters  ;  and  of 
the  Hero  as  king.  But  one  species  of  hero  was  en 
tirely  omitted?  He  did  not  recognize  the  Hero  of 
science ;  he  did  not  know  that,  at  the  time  he  was 


John  James  Audubori.  91 

writing,  there  travelled  alone,  somewhere  in  the  vast 
primeval  forests  of  America,  a  simple  naturalist,  and 
yet  a  character  full  of  manhood  and  heroic  nobleness — 
possessed  of  every  quality  of  energy  and  endurance  to 
be  found  in  the  most  illustrious  of  his  Great  Men  ?  If 
he  did  not  know  it,  let  us  inform  him.  Let  us  show 
him — not  after  any  manner  of  our  own,  but  from  those 
indubitable  evidences,  the  works  of  the  man  himself — 
that  there  are  heroes  of  the  best  sort,  even  in  these  dull 
days.  "  Heroism,"  says  Mr.  Carlyle's  fast  friend,  Em 
erson,  "is  contempt  for  safety  and  ease/' — "it  is  a 
self-t^ust  which  slights  the  restraints  of  prudence  in  the 
plenitude  of  its  energy  and  power," — "  a  mind  of  such 
a  balance  that  no  disturbance  can  shake  its  will,  but 
pleasantly,  and  as  it  were,  merrily  advances  to  its  own 
music," — "the  extreme  of  individual  nature," — "obe 
dience  to  the  secret  impulses  of  an  individual  charac 
ter," —  "is  of  an  undaunted  boldness,  and  of  a  fortitude 
not  to  be  wearied  out."  If  this  be  a  good  definition, 
then  our  hero  is  one  of  the  truest  of  the  world's  heroes, 
worthy  to  be  ranked  and  recorded  on  the  same  page 
with  the  greatest. 

We  do  not  propose  to  write  the  biography  of  Mr. 
Audubon.  There  will  be  time  enough  for  that  when 
his  work  here  shall  have  been  finished.*  We  wish 
only  to  present  some  phases  of  his  singular  and  esti 
mable  character,  as  nearly  as  we  can  in  his  own  words. 
Fortunately,  he  is  of  a  communicative  disposition,  and 
we  shall  not  be  compelled  to  wander  far  for  our  mate 
rials.  Those  delightful  interludes  of  description  and 

*  He  has  prepared  an  autobiography,  which  will  be  published  after 
his  death.  What  a  treat  for  the  readers  of  that  day — that  distant 
day,  we  hope  it  may  be!  [This  has  been  published  by  Putnam  & 
Co.  within  the  past  year.] 


92  John  James  Audubon. 

adventure,  that  are  woven  into  the  woof  of  his  equally 
delightful  sketches  of  birds,  are  full  of  suggestions  for 
us.  Would  only  that  our  space  were  equal  to  the 
abundance  of  our  means  of  interest !  Would  that  the 
dimensions  of  this  publication  were  consistent  with  a 
full  display  of  the  simplicity,  single-heartedness,  en 
thusiasm,  and  perseverance  of  the  subject  of  our  brief 
talk;  of  that  genius,  as  Wilson  has  it,  "self-nursed, 
self-refined,  and  self-tutored,  among  the  inexhaustible 
treasures  of  the  forest,  on  which,  in  one  soul-engross 
ing  pursuit,  it  had  lavished  its  dearest  and  divinest 
passion." 

Mr.  Audubon  was  born  about  1782,  in  the  State  of 
Louisiana,  not  Pennsylvania,  as  has  been  many  times 
stated.  His  parents,  who  were  French,  were  of  that 
happy  nature  which  disposed  them  to  encourage  the 
first  indications  of  talent  in  the  minds  of  their  chil 
dren.  They  early  perceived  in  the  subject  of  these  re 
marks  that  love  of  the  woods  and  fields  which  has 
since  made  him  so  conspicuous  as  a  naturalist.  "  When 
I  had  hardly  learned  to  walk,"  says  he,  in  the  preface 
to  the  first  volume  of  his  Ornithology,  "  and  to  articu 
late  those  first  words  always  so  endearing  to  parents, 
the  productions  of  nature  that  lay  spread  all  around 
were  constantly  pointed  out  to  me.  They  soon  became 
my  playmates ;  and  before  my  ideas  were  sufficiently 
formed  to  enable  me  to  estimate  the  difference  between 
the  azure  tints  of  the  sky  and  the  emerald  hue  of  the 
bright  foliage,  I  felt  that  an  intimacy  with  them,  not 
consisting  of  friendship  merely,  but  bordering  on 
frenzy,  must  accompany  my  steps  through  life  ;  and 
now,  more  than  ever,  am  I  persuaded  of  the  power  of 
those  early  impressions.  They  laid  such  a  hold  of  me, 
that  when  removed  from  the  woods,  the  prairies,  and 


John  James  Audubon.  93 

the  brooks,  or  shut  up  from  the  view  of  the  wide  At 
lantic,  I  experienced  none  of  those  pleasures  most  con 
genial  to  my  mind.  None  but  aerial  companions 
suited  my  fancy.  No  roof  seemed  so  secure  to  me  as 
that  formed  of  the  dense  foliage  under  which  the 
feathered  tribe  were  seen  to  resort,  or  the  caves  and 
fissures  of  the  massy  rocks  to  which  the  dark-winged 
cormorant  and  the  curlew  retired  to  rest,  or  to  protect 
themselves  from  the  fury  of  the  tempest.  My  father 
generally  accompanied  my  steps ;  procured  birds,  and 
flowers  for  me  with  great  eagerness ;  pointed  out  the 
elegant  movements  of  the  former — the  beauty  and  soft 
ness  of  their  plumage — the  manifestations  of  their  pleas 
ure  or  their  sense  of  danger — and  the  always  perfect 
forms  and  splendid  attire  of  the  latter.  My  valued 
preceptor  would  then  speak  of  the  departure  and  re 
turn  of  birds  with  the  seasons  ;  would  describe  their 
haunts,  and,  more  wonderful  than  all,  their  change  of 
livery  ;  thus  exciting  me  to  study  them,  and  to  raise 
my  mind  toward  their  great  Creator.  A  vivid  pleas 
ure  shone  upon  those  days  of  my  early  youth,  attended 
with  a  calmness  of  feeling  that  seldom  failed  to  rivet 
my  attention  for  hours,  while  I  gazed  in  ecstasy  upon 
the  pearly  and  shining  eggs,  as  they  lay  embedded  in 
the  softest  down,  or  among  dried  leaves  and  twigs,  or 
were  exposed  upon  the  burning  sand  or  weather-beaten 
rock  of  our  Atlantic  shore.  I  was  taught  to  look  upon 
them  as  flowers  yet  in  the  bud.  I  watched  their  open 
ing,  to  see  how  nature  had  provided  each  different  spe 
cies  with  eyes,  either  opened  at  birth  or  closed  for 
some  time  after  ;  to  trace  the  slow  progress  of  the 
young  birds  toward  perfection,  or  admire  the  celerity 
with  which  some  of  them,  while  yet  unfledged,  removed 
themselves  from  danger  to  security." 


94     '          John  James  Audubon. 

Nor  did  the  tastes  thus  early  implanted  in  the  mind 
of  the  young  enthusiast  desert  him  in  maturer  years. 
As  Wordsworth  chants, 

"The  sounding  cataract 

Haunted  him,  like  a  passion  ;   the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colors  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  him 
An  appetite  ;  a  feeling  and  a  love 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm, 
By  thought  supplied,  or  any  interest 
Un borrowed  from  the  eye." 

"I  grew  up,"  he  continues,  "and  my  wishes  grew 
with  my  form.  These  wishes  were  for  the  entire  pos 
session  of  all  that  I  saw.  I  was  fervently  desirous  of 
becoming  acquainted  with  nature.  For  many  years, 
however,  I  was  sadly  disappointed,  and  forever,  doubt 
less,  must  I  have  desires  that  cannot  be  gratified.  The 
moment  a  bird  was  dead,  no  matter  how  beautiful  it 
had  been  when  in  life,  the  pleasure  arising  from  the 
possession  of  it  became  blunted;  and  although  the 
greatest  care  was  bestowed  in  endeavors  to  preserve  the 
appearance  of  nature,  I  looked  upon  its  vesture  as  more 
than  sullied,  as  requiring  constant  attentions  and  re 
peated  mendings,  while,  after  all,  it  could  no  longer  be 
said  to  be  fresh  from  the  hands  of  its  Maker.  I  wished 
to  possess  all  the  productions  of  nature,  but  I  wished 
life  with  them.  This  was  impossible.  Then,  what 
was  to  be  done  ?  I  turned  to  my  father,  and  made 
known  to  him  my  disappointment  and  anxiety.  He 
produced  a  book  of  Illustrations.  A  new  life  ran  in  my 
veins.  I  turned  over  the  leaves  with  avidity,  and  al 
though  what  I  saw  was  not  what  I  longed  for,  it  gave 
me  a  desire  to  copy  nature.  To  nature  I  went,  and 
tried  to  imitate  her,  as  in  the  days  of  my  childhood  I 


John  James  Audubon.  9  5 

had  tried  to  raise  myself  from  the  ground  and  stand 
erect,  before  time  had  imparted  the  vigor  necessary  for 
the  success  of  such  an  undertaking.  How  sorely  dis 
appointed  did  I  feel  for  many  years,  when  I  saw  that 
my  productions  were  worse  than  those  which  I  ventured 
(perhaps  in  silence)  to  regard  as  bad  in  the  book  given 
me  by  my  father !  My  pencil  gave  birth  to  a  family  of 
cripples.  So  maimed  were  most  of  them,  that  they 
resembled  the  mangled  corpses  on  a  field  of  battle, 
compared  with  the  integrity  of  living  men.  These  dif 
ficulties  and  disappointments  irritated  me,  but  never 
for  a  moment  destroyed  the  desire  of  obtaining  perfect 
representations  of  nature.  The  worse  my  drawings 
were,  the  more  beautiful  did  I  see  the  originals.  To 
have  been  torn  from  the  study,  would  have  been  as 
death  to  me.  My  time  wras  entirely  occupied  with  it. 
I  produced  hundreds  of  these  rude  sketches  annually  ; 
and,  for  a  long  time,  at  my  request,  they  made  bonfires 
on  the  anniversary  of  my  birthday." 

In  his  sixteenth  year,  that  is,  about  1798,  he  went  to 
France  to  pursue  his  education.  He  received  lessons 
in  drawing  from  the  celebrated  David.  But  the  "eyes 
and  noses  of  giants,  and  the  heads  of  horses  represented 
in  ancient  sculpture,"  w7ere  not  the  themes  he  would  be 
at ;  and,  although  he  prosecuted  his  studies  sedulously, 
his  heart  still  panted  for  the  sparkling  streams  and  in 
terminable  forests  of  his  "native  land  of  groves."  He 
returned  home  the  following  year,  with  a  rekindled 
ardor  for  the  woods,  and  commenced  a  collection  of 
designs,  destined  shortly  to  swell  into  that  magnificent 
series  of  volumes  which  the  world  has  applauded  as  the 
"  Birds  of  America."  They  were  begun  on  a  beautiful 
plantation  which  his  father  had  given  him,  situated  on 
the  banks  of  the  Schuylkill,  and  near  a  creek  known 
as  the  Perkioming.  There,  amid  its  fine  woodlands,  its 


96  John  James  Audit-ban. 

extensive  fields,  its  hills  crowned  with  evergreens,  he 
meditated  his  simple  and  agreeable  objects,  and  pursued 
his  rambles,  from  the  first  faint  streaks  of  day  until  late 
in  the  evening,  when  wet  with  dew,  and  laden  with 
feathered  captives,  he  returned  to  the  quiet  enjoyment 
of  the  fireside. 

Yet  the  passion  for  birds  did  not  seem  to  seal  his 
heart  to  the  influences  of  a  still  more  tender  and  ex 
alted  passion.  He  married,  and  was  fortunate  in 
marrying  a  lady  who  in  vicissitude  has  animated  his 
courage,  and  in  prosperity  appreciated  the  grounds  and 
measure  of  his  success.  "But  who  cares,"  says  he, 
speaking  of  the  event,  "to  listen  to  the  love-tales  of  a 
naturalist,  whose  feelings  may  be  supposed  to  be  as 
light  as  the  feathers  of  the  birds  he  delineates?" 

For  many  years  the  necessities  of  life  drove  him  into 
commercial  enterprises,  which  in  the  end  involved  him 
in  a  series  of  losses.  His  mind,  in  fact,  was  so  filled 
with  Nature,  that  all  his  traffickings  proved  unprofitable. 
From  observation  and  study  only  could  he  derive  grati 
fication.  He  was  compelled  to  struggle  against  the 
wishes  of  all  his  friends,  who,  excepting  his  wife  and 
children, — to  their  lasting  honor  be  it  said, — strove  to 
wean  him  from  pursuits  that,  in  the  world's  eye,  are  so 
barren  and  unproductive.  These  importunities  had  an 
effect  directly  the  contrary  of  what  was  intended.  They 
only  kindled  instead  of  dampening  his  ardor.  He  un 
dertook  long  and  tedious  journeys  ;  he  ransacked  the 
woods,  the  lakes,  the  prairies,  and  the  shores  of  the  At 
lantic  ;  he  spent  years  away  from  his  family.  "Yet,  will 
you  believe  it,"  says  he,  "I  had  no  other  object  in  view 
than  simply  to  enjoy  the  sight  of  nature.  Never  for  a 
moment  did  I  conceive  the  hope  of  becoming,  in  any 
degree,  useful  to  my  kind,  until  I  accidentally  formed 
acquaintance  with  the  Prince  of  Musignano  (Lucien 


John  James  Audubon.  97 

Bonaparte),  at  Philadelphia,  whither  I  had  gone  with  a 
view  of  proceeding  eastward  along  the  coast."  This 
was  the  5th  of  April,  1824. 

Of  his  public  labors  we  shall  speak  a  word  in  the  se 
quel  ;  but  for  the  present,  let  us  follow  him  in  his  sol 
itary  wanderings.  Having  lived  on  his  beautiful  plan 
tation  for  ten  years,  he  was  induced  to  remove  to  the 
West.  With  a  mattress,  a  few  prepared  viands,  and  two 
negroes  to  assist  him  in  the  toils  of  emigration,  he  de 
parted,  accompanied  by  his  wife  and  child,  for  a  resi 
dence  which  had  been  procured  for  him  in  the  village 
of  Henderson,  Kentucky.  The  method  of  travelling 
at  that  day,  which  he  has  faithfully  described,  furnishes 
a  striking  contrast  to  the  more  easy  and  expeditious 
modes  of  modern  conveyance.  It  was  in  the  month 
of  October  that  the  small  party  set  out.  The  autumnal 
tints,  he  says,  already  decorated  the  shores  of  that 
queen  of  rivers,  the  Ohio,  along  which  they  rowed 
their  feeble  skiff.  Every  tree  was  hung  with  long  and 
flowing  festoons  of  different  species  of  vines,  many 
loaded  with  clustered  fruits  of  varied  brilliancy,  their 
rich  carmine  mingling  beautifully  with  the  yellow  foli 
age,  which  yet  predominated  over  the  green  leaves,  re 
flecting  more  lively  tints  from  the  clear  stream  than  ever 
landscape  painter  portrayed  or  poet  imagined.  The 
days  were  still  warm.  The  sun  had  assumed  the  rich 
and  glowing  hue  which  at  that  season  produces  the  In 
dian  summer.  They  glided  down  the  river,  meeting  no 
other  ripple  of  the  water  than  that  formed  by  the  pro 
pulsion  of  the  boat.  Now  and  then  a  large  catfish  rose 
to  the  surface,  in  pursuit  of  a  shoal  of  fry,  which  starting 
simultaneously  from  the  liquid  element,  like  so  many 
silvery  arrows,  scattered  a  shower  of  light,  while  the 
pursuer,  with  open  jaws,  seized  the  stragglers,  and  with 
a  splash  of  his  tail  disappeared  from  view.  At  night, 
5 


98  John   James  Audubon. 

the  tinkling  of  bells  along  the  shore  told  them  that 
cattle  were  gently  roving  from  valley  to  valley  in  search 
of  food,  or  returning  to  their  distant  homes.  The 
hooting  of  the  great  owl,  or  the  muffled  noise  of  its 
wings  as  it  sailed  smoothly  over  the  stream,  were  mat 
ters  of  interest  to  them  ;  and  so  was  the  sound  of  the 
boatman's  horn,  as  it  came  winding  more  and  more 
softly  from  afar.  When  daylight  returned,  many  song 
sters  burst  forth  with  echoing  notes,  more  and  more 
mellow  to  the  listening  ear.  Here  and  there  the  lonely 
cabin  of  a  squatter  struck  the  eye,  giving  note  of  com 
mencing  civilization.  The  crossing  of  the  stream  by  a 
deer  foretold  how  soon  the  hills  would  be  covered  with 
snow.  Sluggish  flat-boats  were  overtaken  and  passed  ; 
some  laden  with  produce  from  the  different  head-waters 
of  the  small  rivers,  that  pour  their  tributary  streams  into 
the  Ohio  ;  others,  of  less  dimensions,  crowded  with 
emigrants  from  distant  points,  in  search  of  "a  new 
home."  The  margins  of  the  rivers  were  amply  sup 
plied  with  game.  A  wild  turkey,  a  grouse,  or  a  blue- 
winged  teal,  could  be  procured  in  a  few  moments  ;  and 
the  voyagers  fared  well,  for,  whenever  they  pleased,  they 
landed,  struck  up  a  fire,  and,  provided  as  they  were 
with  the  necessary  utensils,  easily  dressed  a  good  re 
past. 

After  jogging  on  for  many  days  at  this  rate,  they  at 
last  reached  their  habitation  in  the  wilderness.  "When 
I  think  of  these  times,"  continues  Mr.  Audubon,  at  the 
close  of  his  narrative,  "and  call  back  to  mind  the 
grandeur  and  beauty  of  those  almost  uninhabited 
shores  ;  when  I  picture  to  myself  the  dense  and  lofty 
summits  of  the  forests,  that  everywhere  spread  along  the 
hills,  and  overhang  the  margins  of  the  streams,  unmo 
lested  by  the  axe  of  the  settler ;  when  I  know  how 
dearly  purchased  the  safe  navigation  of  that  river  has 


John  James  Audiibon.  99 

been  by  the  blood  of  many  worthy  Virginians  ;  when  I 
see  that  no  longer  any  aborigines  are  to.be  found  there, 
and  that  the  vast  herds  of  elks,  deers,  and  buffaloes, 
which  once  pastured  on  those  hills  and  in  these  valleys, 
making  to  themselves  great  roads  to  the  several  salt 
springs,  have  ceased  to  exist ;  when  I  reflect  that  all 
this  grand  portion  of  our  Union,  instead  of  being  in  a 
state  of  nature,  is  now  covered  with  villages,  farms,  and 
towns,  where  the  din  of  hammers  and  machinery  is 
constantly  heard  ;  that  the  woods  are  fast  disappearing 
under  the  axe  by  day  and  the  fire  by  night ;  that  hun 
dreds  of  steamboats  are  gliding  to  and  fro  over  the 
whole  length  of  the  majestic  river,  forcing  commerce  to 
take  root  and  to  prosper  at  every  spot  ;  when  I  see  the 
surplus  population  of  Europe  coming  to  assist  in  the 
destruction  of  the  forest,  and  transplanting  civilization 
into  its  darkest  recesses  ;  when  I  remember  that  these 
extraordinary  changes  have  all  taken  place  in  the  short 
period  of  twenty  years,  I  pause — wonder — and,  al 
though  I  know  all  to  be  fact,  can  scarcely  believe  its 
reality." 

His  new  domicil  at  Henderson  gave  him  ample  op 
portunities  for  the  prosecution  of  his  ornithological  in 
quiries.  He  was  accustomed  to  make  long  excursions 
through  all  the  neighboring  country,  scouring  the  fields 
and  the  woods,  and  fording  the  lakes  and  rivers.  He 
describes  himself  as  setting  out  early  in  the  morning, 
with  no  companion  but  his  dog  and  gun  ;  the  faithful 
tin  box,  containing  his  pencils  and  colors,  slung  to  his 
side  ;  now  popping  down  the  unconscious  warbler  that 
makes  the  air  vocal  from  some  neighboring  tree  ;  now 
hastening  to  the  broad  shelter  of  a  venerable  oak,  to 
draw  the  form  and  paint  the  variegated  plumage  of  his 
victim  ;  now  crouching  for  hours  underneath  some 
withered  trunk,  to  observe  the  habits  of  some  shy  and 


ioo  John  James  Audubon. 

timid  bird  ;  now  climbing  the  jagged  side  of  a  rocky 
precipice,  to  find  the  nest-eggs  of  the  eagle  that  screams 
and  flutters  upon  the  dry  top  of  the  storm-blasted  beech 
still  higher  up ;  now  treading  upon  the  head  of  the 
serpent  that  hisses  and  wreathes  among  the  thick  leaves 
of  the  copse  ;  now  starting  the  bear  and  cougar  from 
their  secret  lairs  in  the  fastnesses  ;  now  cleaving  with 
lusty  sinew,  his  gun  and  apparatus  fastened  above  his 
head,  the  troubled  waters  of  a  swollen  stream  ;  now 
wandering  for  days  through  the  illimitable  and  pathless 
thickets  of  the  cane-brake,  at  night  sleeping  upon  the 
hard  ground,  or  across  the  branches  of  trees,  and  by 
day  almost  perishing  with  thirst  ;  and  now  hailing 
with  pleasure,  at  sunset,  the  distant  but  cheerful  glim 
mer  of  the  lonely  log-cabin  fire. 

The  incidents,  it  may  be  imagined,  of  expeditions  of 
this  sort  are  many  and  striking  :  exposed  to  danger  on 
every  side,  by  floods,  by  tempests,  by  fires,  by  wild 
beasts,  and  by  the  hands  of  man,  his  life  was  a  per 
petual  scene  of  vicissitudes  and  adventures.  At  one 
time,  in  the  month  of  November,  he  tells  us,  travelling 
through  the  barrens  of  Kentucky,  he  remarked  a  sud 
den  and  strange  darkness  issuing  from  the  western  hori 
zon.  At  first  he  supposed  it  might  be  a  coming  storm 
of  thunder  and  rain.  He  had  proceeded  about  a  mile, 
when  he  heard  what  he  imagined  to  be  the  distant 
rumbling  of  a  violent  tornado.  He  spurred  his  horse, 
with  the  view  of  galloping  to  a  place  of  shelter,  but  the 
animal,  apparently  more  sagacious  than  the  rider, 
nearly  stopped,  or  rather  moved  forward  slowly,  placing 
one  foot  before  the  other  with  as  much  precaution  as 
if  walking  on  a  smooth  sheet  of  ice.  He  dismounted 
to  ascertain  what  was  the  matter,  when  the  steed  fell  to 
groaning  piteously,  hung  his  head,  spread  out  his  fore 
legs,  as  if  to  save  himself  from  falling,  and  stood  stock- 


John   James.  Ail dibbvn,  101 

still.  At  that  instant,  all  the  shrubs  and  trees  began  to 
move  from  their  very  roots,  and  the  ground  rose  and 
fell  in  successive  furrows,  like  the  ruffled  waters  of  a  sea. 
It  was  an  earthquake.  "Who  can  tell  of  the  sensations 
I  experienced/'  he  says,  "  when  rocking  on  my  horse, 
and  moved  to  and  fro  like  a  child  in  his  cradle,  with 
the  most  imminent  danger  around,  and  expecting  the 
ground  every  moment  to  open,  and  present  to  my  eyes 
such  an  abyss  as  might  ingulf  myself  and  all  around  me? 
The  fearful  convulsion,  however,  lasted  only  a  few 
minutes,  and  the  heavens  again  brightened  as  quickly 
as  they  had  become  obscured  ;  my  horse  brought  his 
feet  to  their  natural  position,  raised  his  head,  and  gal 
loped  off  as  if  loose  and  frolicking  without  a  rider." 

At  another  time,  he  had  just  forded  Highland 
Creek,  and  was  entering  the  tract  of  bottom  land  be 
tween  that  and  Canoe  Creek,  when  he  discovered  a  hazy 
thickness  in  the  atmosphere,  and  apprehended  another 
earthquake  ;  but  his  horse  did  not  stop,  as  before,  nor 
exhibit  any  propensity  to  prepare  for  such  an  occurrence. 
He  dismounted  near  a  brook  to  quench  his  thirst.  As 
his  lips  were  about  to  touch  the  water,  he  heard  a  most 
extraordinary  murmuring  sound  in  the  distance.  He 
drank,  however,  and  as  he  arose,  looked  toward  the 
southwest,  where  he  observed  a  yellowish  oval  spot, 
quite  new  to  him  in  appearance.  At  the  next  moment, 
a  light  breeze  began  to  agitate  the  taller  trees  ;  it  gradu 
ally  increased,  until  branches  and  twigs  were  seen  fall 
ing  slantingly  to  the  ground  ;  and  two  minutes  had 
scarcely  elapsed,  when  the  whole  forest  was  in  fearful 
motion.  The  noblest  trees,  unable  to  stand  against  the 
blast,  were  breaking  in  pieces.  Before  he  could  take 
measures  for  his  safety,  a  hurricane  was  passing  op 
posite  the  place  where  he  stood.  "  Never  can  I  forget," 
says  he,  "the  scene  which  that  moment  presented 


TO 2  Jwn   James  Audubon. 

itself.  Some  of  the  largest  trees  were  bending  and 
writhing  under  the  gale ;  others  suddenly  snapped 
across  ;  and  many,  after  a  momentary  resistance,  fell  up 
rooted  to  the  earth.  The  mass  of  branches,  twigs,  foli 
age,  and  dust,  that  moved  through  the  air,  was  whirled 
onward  like  a  cloud  of  feathers,  and,  on  passing,  dis 
closed  a  wide  space  filled  with  fallen  trees,  naked 
stumps,  and  heaps  of  shapeless  ruins,  which  marked 
the  path  of  the  tempest.  The  horrible  noise  resembled 
that  of  the  great  cataracts  of  Niagara,  and  as  it  howled 
along  in  the  track  of  the  desolating  tempest,  produced 
a  feeling  in  my  mind  which  it  is  impossible  to  de 
scribe." 

Nor  to  the  fury  of  the  elements  alone  was  our  intrepid 
man  of  science  exposed.  Once — and,  singular  to  say, 
only  once,  in  wandering  for  twenty  years — was  he 
threatened  with  death  by  the  hand  of  man.  This  was, 
when  returning  from  the  Upper  Mississippi,  he  was 
forced  to  cross  one  of  the  wide  prairies  of  that  region. 
It  was  toward  the  dusk  of  the  evening,  when  wearied 
with  an  interminable  jaunt,  he  approached  a  light  that 
feebly  shone  from  the  window  of  a  log  hut.  He  reached 
the  spot,  and  presenting  himself  at  the  door,  asked  a 
woman  of  tall  figure  whether  he  might  take  shelter  under 
her  roof.  Her  voice  was  gruff,  and  her  dress  carelessly 
thrown  about  her  person.  Answering  his  question  in 
the  affirmative,  he  walked  in,  took  a  wooden  stool,  and 
quietly  seated  himself  by  the  fire.  A  finely  formed 
young  Indian,  his  head  resting  between  his  hands,  with 
his  elbows  on  his  knees,  was  seated  in  the  centre  of  the 
cabin.  A  long  bow  stood  against  the  wall,  while  a 
quantity  of  arrows  and  two  or  three  black  raccoon-skins 
lay  at  his  feet.  He  moved  not :  he  apparently  breathed 
not.  Being  addressed  in  French,  he  raised  his  head, 
pointed  to  one  of  his  eyes  with  his  finger,  and  gave  a 


James  Audiibon.  103 

significant  glance  with  the  other.  His  face  was  covered 
with  blood.  It  appeared,  that  an  hour  before,  in  the 
act  of  discharging  an  arrow  at  a  raccoon,  the  arrow  split 
upon  the  cord,  and  sprang  back  with  such  violence  into 
his  right  eye,  as  to  destroy  it  forever.  "Feeling 
hungry,"  Mr.  Audubon  continues,  "I  inquired  what 
sort  of  fare  I  might  expect.  Such  a  thing  as  a  bed  was 
not  to  be  seen,  but  many  large  untanned  bear  and  buf 
falo  hides  lay  piled  up  in  a  corner.  I  drew  a  fine  time 
piece  from  my  vest,  and  told  the  woman  that  it  was  late, 
and  that  I  was  fatigued.  She  had  espied  my  watch,  the 
richness  of  which  seemed  to  operate  upon  her  feelings 
with  electric  quickness.  She  told  me  that  there  was 
plenty  of  venison  and  jerked  buffalo  meat,  and  that  on 
removing  the  ashes  I  should  find  a  cake.  But  my  watch 
had  struck  her  fancy,  and  her  curiosity  had  to  be  grati 
fied  with  a  sight  of  it.  I  took  off  the  gold  chain  that 
secured  it  from  around  my  neck,  and  presented  it  to  her. 
She  was  all  ecstasy,  spoke  of  its  beauty,  asked  me  its 
value,  put  the  chain  around  her  brawny  neck,  saying 
how  happy  the  possession  of  such  a  chain  would  make 
her.  Thoughtless,  and,  as  I  fancied  myself  in  so  retired 
a  spot,  secure,  I  paid  little  attention  to  her  talk  or  her 
movements.  I  helped  my  dog  to  a  good  supper  of 
venison,  and  was  not  long  in  satisfying  the  demands  of 
my  own  appetite.  The  Indian  rose  from  his  seat  as  if 
in  extreme  suffering.  He  passed  and  repassed  me 
several  times,  and  once  pinched  me  on  the  side  so  vio 
lently,  that  the  pain  nearly  brought  forth  an  exclamation 
of  anger.  I  looked  at  him.  His  eye  met  mine  ;  but 
his  look  was  so  forbidding  that  it  struck  a  chill  into  the 
more  nervous  part  of  my  system.  He  again  seated 
himself,  drew  a  butcher-knife  from  its  greasy  scabbard, 
examined  its  edge,  as  I  would  do  that  of  a  razor  1 
suspected  to  be  dull,  replaced  it,  and  again  taking  his 


IO4  John  James  Auduban. 

tomahawk  from  his  back,  filled  the  pipe  of  it  with  to 
bacco,  and  sent  me  expressive  glances  whenever  our 
hostess  chanced  to  have  her  back  toward  us.  Never  till 
that  moment  had  my  senses  been  awakened  to  the 
danger  which  I  now  suspected  to  .be  about  me.  I  re 
turned  glance  for  glance  with  my  companion,  and  rested 
well  assured  that,  whatever  enemies  I  might  have,  he 
was  not  of  the  number." 

In  the  mean  time,  he  retired  to  rest  upon  the  skins, 
when  two  athletic  youths,  the  sons  of  the  woman,  made 
their  entrance.  She  whispered  with  them  a  little  while, 
when  they  fell  to  eating  and  drinking,  to  a  state  border 
ing  on  intoxication.  "Judge  my  astonishment,"  he 
says,  "when  I  saw  this  incarnate  fiend  take  a  large 
carving-knife,  and  go  to  the  grindstone  to  whet  its  edge  ! 
I  saw  her  pour  the  water  on  the  turning-machine,  and 
watched  her  working  away  with  the  dangerous  instru 
ment,  until  the  sweat  covered  every  part  of  my  body,  in 
spite  of  my  determination  to  defend  myself  to  the  last. 
Her  task  finished,  she  walked  to  her  reeling  sons,  and 
said  :  '  There,  that'll  soon  settle  him  !  Boys,  kill  yon 

• ,  and  then  for  the  watch  !'  I  turned,  cocked  my 

gun-locks  silently,  and  lay  ready  to  start  up  and  shoot 
the  first  who  might  attempt  my  life."  Fortunately,  two 
strangers  entering  at  the  moment,  the  purpose  of  the 
woman  was  disclosed,  and  she  and  her  drunken  sons 
were  secured. 

But  no  earthquakes,  nor  hurricanes,  nor  carving- 
knives  of  the  wild  denizens  of  the  desert,  afflicted  him 
half  so  much  as  what  he  once  suffered  in  consequence 
of  an  attack  by  a  wild  and  ferocious  animal — neither 
more  nor  less  than — a  rat.  It  was  a  calamity,  the  like 
of  which  is  seldom  recorded  in  literary  history.  Edward 
Livingston,  it  is  said,  having  completed  his  great  code 
of  Louisianian  law,  beheld  the  labor  of  three  persevering 


John  James  Aitditbon.  io5 

years  perish  in  an  instant  in  the  flames ;  Thomas  Car- 
lyle,  too,  when  he  had  finished  the  first  volume  of  his 
French  "Revolution,  had  every  scrap  of  it  burned 
through  the  carelessness  of  a  friend  ;  and  so  Mr.  Audu- 
bon,  having  wandered  and  toiled  for  years,  to  get  ac 
curate  representations  of  American  birds,  found  that 
two  Norway  rats  had  in  a  night  destroyed  two  hundred 
of  his  original  drawings,  containing  the  forms  of  more 
than  a  thousand  inhabitants  of  the  air.  All  were  gone, 
except  a  few  bits  of  gnawed  paper,  upon  which  the 
marauding  rascals  had  reared  a  family  of  their  young. 
"The  burning  heat,"  says  the  noble-hearted  sufferer, 
"which  instantly  rushed  through  my  brain,  was  too 
great  to  be  endured,  without  affecting  the  whole  of  my 
nervous  system.  I  slept  not  for  several  nights,  and  the 
days  passed  like  days  of  oblivion — until  the  animal 
powers  being  recalled  into  action  through  the  strength 
of  my  constitution,  I  took  up  my  gun,  my  note-book, 
and  my  pencils,  and  went  forth  to  the  woods  as  gayly  as 
if  nothing  had  happened."  Ay,  go  forth  to  the  woods, 
lover  of  divine  nature,  with  thy  serenest  hopeful  heart  ! 
there  is  joy  there  still  for  thee  ! — for  the  whole  earth  is 
laughing  in  its  brightness  and  glory,  and  the  forests  re 
echo  the  carols  of  innumerable  sweet  voices  that  call 
thee  to  the  duty  of  love. 

"  There  are  notes  of  joy  from  the  hang-bird  and  wren, 

And  the  gossip  of  swallows  through  all  the  sky ; 
The  ground-squirrel  gayly  chirps  by  his  den, 
And  the  wilding  bee  hums  merrily  by. 

"  There's  a  dance  of  leaves  in  that  aspen  bower, 

There's  a  titter  of  winds  in  that  beechen  tree, 
There's  a  smile  on  the  fruit,  and  a  smile  on  the  flower, 
And  a  laugh  from  the  brook  that  runs  to  the  sea."* 

*  Bryant. 


io6  John  James  Audubon. 

He  went  forth,  and  in  less  than  three  years  had  his 
portfolio  again  filled. 

It  was  in  1824,  we  remarked,  that  Lucien  Bonaparte 
suggested  to  him  the  idea  of  collecting  and  making 
public  the  treasures  which  had  been  amassed  in  his  wild 
journeyings.  For  some  time,  in  the  depths  of  the 
solitudes,  his  mind  brooded  over  the  thought.  At 
length  he  resolved  upon  a  visit  to  Europe,  and  with  that 
instant  action  which  has  been  the  secret  of  his  success, 
he  prepared  for  his  departure.  He  sailed — but  maturer 
reflection  taught  him  to  approach  the  shores  of  England 
with  despondency  and  doubt.  There  was  not  a  friend 
in  all  the  nation  to  whom  he  could  apply.  When  he 
had  landed,  his  situation  appeared  to  him  precarious  in 
the  extreme.  He  imagined,  he  says,  in  the  simplicity 
of  his  heart,  that  every  individual  he  was  about  to  meet 
might  be  possessed  of  talents  superior  to  any  on  our 
side  of  the  Atlantic.  Traversing  the  streets  of  Liverpool 
for  two  whole  days,  he  had  looked  in  vain  for  a  single 
glance  of  sympathy. 

But  how  soon  did  the  aspect  of  things  around  him 
change  !  There  are  kind,  generous  hearts  everywhere  ; 
men  of  noble  faculties  to  discern  the  beautiful  and  true, 
and  women  of  warm  gushing  affections.  In  a  little 
while,  he  was  the  admired  of  all  .admirers.  Men  of 
genius,  the  Wilsons,  the  Roscoes,  the  Swainsons,  frankly 
recognized  his  claims ;  learned  societies  extended 
to  him  the  warm  and  willing  hand  of  fellowship ;  the 
houses  of  the  nobility  were  opened  to  him  ;  and,  wher 
ever  he  went,  the  solitary,  unfriended  American  back 
woodsman  was  a  conspicuous  object  of  remark  and 
admiration.  Under  such  auspices,  in  1831,  at  Edin 
burgh,  he  put  forth  his  first  volume  of  Ornithological 
Biography.  Its  striking  and  original  merit  procured 
him  subscribers  to  the  remaining  volumes,  from  all  parts 


John  James  Audubon.  107 

of  the  kingdom.  At  once,  he  took  rank  as  the  most 
worthy  ornithologist  of  the  age, — able  as  an  observer 
and  describer  to  wear  the  mantle  of  the  gifted  Wilson, 
and,  as  a  painter  of  animals,  to  take  his  place  by  the  side 
of  the  most  famous  artists. 

From  England,  Mr.  Audubon  proceeded  to  France, 
where  he  received  the  homage  of  the  most  distinguished 
men  of  science  of  that  learned  nation  ;  among  the  rest, 
of  that  gigantic  but  graceful  genius,  Cuvier,  the  glance 
of  whose  eye  into  the  great  valley  of  death  has  infused 
life  into  the  dry  bones  of  a  thousand  years. 

When  he  returned  to  his  native  land,  it  was  only  to 
renew  with  a  more  burning  ardor  his  labors  in  the 
woods.  His  first  expedition  was  to  the  coast  of  Florida, 
where,  amid  flocks  of  snowy  pelicans  and  cormorants, 
tortoises  and  flying-fish,  he  laid  up  treasures  for  his 
forthcoming  volumes.  Having  examined  every  part 
of  the  coast,  and  of  the  different  keys,  passing  even  to 
the  Tortugas  Islands,  he  returned  to  Charleston,  S.  G, 
anxious  to  bend  his  course  to  the  northeast,  that  he 
might  keep  pace  with  the  birds  during  their  migrations. 
Illness  detained  him  for  the  greater  part  of  the  summer 
at  Boston,  but  having  recovered  about  the  middle  of 
August,  he  left  his  Boston  friends  on  his  way  eastward. 
He  explored  the  whole  of  the  State  of  Maine,  the  British 
province  of  New  Brunswick,  a  portion  of  the  Canadas, 
and  when  there  were  no  more  prizes  in  those  districts 
to  carry  away,  he  made  his  way  to  the  shores  of  ice 
bound  Labrador.  His  researches  into  the  habits  of  the 
birds,  beasts,  and  men  of  this  hyperborean  region  were 
successful,  and  he  returned,  rich  with  materials,  to  the 
abode  of  his  family  and  friends.  Of  the  industry  with 
which  he  pushed  his  inquiries,  and  of  the  startling  and 
touching  adventures  to  which  his  various  excursions 
gave  rise,  his  volumes  are  full  of  entertaining  and  instruct- 


io8  John  James  Aitdubon. 

ive  proof.  Our  plan  does  not  allow  us,  as  we  should 
wish,  to  introduce  them  here.  Let  us  add,  however, 
that  his  Ornithological  Biography  has  expanded  into 
five  large  books;  that  his  "Birds  of  America"  are 
finished  in  glorious  style,  and  that  his  magnificent 
"Illustrations,"  being  those  birds  drawn  to  the  size  of 
life,  have,  for  some  time,  been  the  astonishment  and 
delight  of  the  cultivated  world.  Yet  his  wanderings 
continue,  and  he  labors  in  the  cause  of  his  favorite 
science  as  sedulously  as  ever.* 

What  a  life  has  that  been  of  which  we  have  here 
given  a  faint  outline  !  What  a  character  is  that  of 
which  we  have  made  only  a  rough  sketch  !  Is  not  John 
James  Audubon,  as  we  said  in  the  outset,  an  admirable 
specimen  of  the  Hero  as  a  man  of  science  ?  For  forly 
years  or  more  he  has  followed,  with  more  than  religious 
devotion,  a  beautiful  and  elevated  pursuit,  enlarging  its 
boundaries  by  his  discoveries,  and  illustrating  its  objects 
by  his  art.  In  all  climates  and  in  all  weathers  ; 
scorched  by  burning  suns,  drenched  by  piercing  rains, 
frozen  by  the  fiercest  colds  ;  now  diving  fearlessly  into 
the  densest  forest,  now  wandering  alone  over  the  most 
savage  regions  ;  in  perils,  in  difficulties,  and  in  doubts  ; 
with  no  companion  to  cheer  his  way  ;  far  from  the  smiles 
and  applause  of  society  ;  listening  only  to  the  sweet 
music  of  birds,  or  to  the  sweeter  music  of  his  own 
thoughts,  he  has  faithfully  kept  his  path.  The  records 
of  man's  life  contain  few  nobler  examples  of  strength 

*  During  the  last  winter,  which  he  spent  in  this  city  (New  York), 
he  has  worked  on  an  average  fourteen  hours  a  day,  preparing  a  work 
on  the  Quadrupeds  °f  America,  similar  to  his  work  on  the  Birds. 
The  drawings,  already  finished,  of  the  size  of  life,  are  masterpieces  in 
their  way,  surpassing,  if  that  be  possible,  in  fidelity  and  brilliancy,  all 
that  he  has  done  before.  Early  in  the  summer,  he  will  depart  to  con 
tinue  his  labors  in  the  woods. 


John  James  Audubon.  109 

of  purpose  and  indefatigable  energy.  Led  on  solely 
by  his  pure,  lofty,  kindling  enthusiasm,  no  thirst  for 
wealth,  no  desire  of  distinction,  no  restless  ambition  for 
eccentric  character,  could  have  induced  him  to  undergo 
so  many  sacrifices,  or  sustained  him  under  so  many 
trials.  Higher  principles  and  worthier  motives  alone 
have  enabled  him  to  meet  such  discouragements,  and 
accomplish  such  miracles  of  achievement.  He  has  en 
larged  and  enriched  the  domains  of  a  pleasing  and 
useful  science  ;  he  has  revealed  to  us  the  existence  of 
many  species  of  birds  before  unknown  ;  he  has  given 
us  more  accurate  information  of  the  forms  and  habits 
of  those  that  were  known  ;  he  has  corrected  the  blun 
ders  of  his  predecessors  ;  and  he  has  imparted  to  the 
study  of  natural  history  the  grace  and  fascination  of 
romance. 

By  his  pencil  and  by  his  pen,  he  has  made  the 
world  eternally  his  debtor.  Exquisite  delineations  of 
the  visible  and  vocal  ornaments  of  the  air,  drawn  with 
so  much  nicety,  colored  with  so  much  brilliancy,  as 
they  are  seen  in  their  own  favorite  haunts,  who  can  ad 
equately  describe  ?  We  remember  well  the  effect 
wrought  on  our  mind,  when  we  first  saw  the  whole  of 
his  wonderful  collection  of  paintings,  as  they  were  ex 
hibited  a  few  years  since  in  New  York.  It  produced 
an  overpowering  sense  of  wonder  and  'admiration.  As 
John  Wilson  has  said  of  the  same  scene,  shown  at  Ed 
inburgh,  the  spectator  instantly  imagined  himself  in  the 
forest.  The  birds  were  all  there,  — "  all  were  of  the  size 
of  life,  from  the  wren  and  the  humming-bird  to  the 
wild  turkey  and  the  bird  of  Washington.  But  what 
signified  the  mere  size  ?  The  colors  were  all  of  life  too, 
bright  as  when  borne  in  beaming  beauty  through  the 
woods.  There,  too,  were  their  attitudes  and  postures, 
infinite  as  they  are  assumed  by  the  restless  creatures,  in 


iio  John  James  Audubon. 

motion  or  rest,  in  their  glee  and  their  gambols,  their 
loves  and  their  wars,  singing,  or  caressing,  or  brooding, 
or  preying,  or  tearing  one  another  to  pieces.  The  trees 
on  which  they  sat  or  sported,  all  true  to  nature,  in 
bole,  branch,  spray,  and  leaf,  the  flowery  shrubs  and 
the  ground-flowers,  the  weeds  and  the  very  grass,  all 
American — as  were  the  atmosphere  and  the  skies.  It 
was  a  wild  and  poetical  vision  of  the  heart  of  the  New 
World,  inhabited  as  yet  almost  wholly  by  the  lovely  or 
noble  creatures  that  "own  not  man's  dominion."  It 
was,  indeed,  a  rich  and  magnificent  sight,  such  as  we 
would  not  for  a  diadem  have  lost. 

A  peculiar  ease,  simplicity,  and  elegance  mark  Mr. 
Audubon's  written  style.  His  description  of  birds  in 
their  various  moods  are  not  the  dull  and  dry  details  of  a 
naturalist,  but  the  warm,  lively  picturesque  paintings  of 
a  poet.  To  open  at  any  page  of  his  volumes  is  to  step 
at  once  into  a  region  of  agreeable  forms  and  enrapturing 
sounds.  He  seems  to  enter  into  the  very  spirits  of 
birds  themselves,  sings  when  they  sing,  and  rises  upon 
the  wing  when  they  fly.  And  his  whole  life,  like  theirs, 
seems  to  have  been  a  perpetual  and  cheerful  ascription 
of  praise,  to  that 

"  Power  whose  care 

Teaches  their  way  along  the  pathless  coast, 
The  desert  and  illimitable  air — 
Long  wandering,  but  not  lost." 

[Parts  of  this  hurried  sketch  were  afterward  used  in  an  article  I 
contributed  to  Putnam's  "  Homes  of  American  Authors."] 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY.* 


UA  pard-like  Spirit,  beautiful  and  swift, 
A  Love  in  desolation  masked  ;  a  Power, 
Girt  round  with  weakness ;   it  can  scarce  uplift 
The  weight  of  the  superincumbent  hour ; 
It  is  a  dying  lamp,  a  falling  shower, 
A  breaking  billow — even  while  we  speak 
Is  it  not  broken?" — ADONAIS. 

]E  design  to  make  this  work  the  occasion  of 
some  remarks  upon  Shelley  as  a  poet  and  a 
man.  We  think  that  justice  has  never  yet 
been  done  him.  His  countrymen  are  not  in  a  mood 
either  to  apprehend  or  to  confess  his  value.  The  gall 
of  prejudice  has  not  yet  passed  from  their  eyes ;  their 
judgments  are  still  warped  by  old  remembrances  ;  and 
it  is  left  to  posterity  and  other  lands  to  form  a  proper 
estimate  of  what  he  was.  No  time  or  place  more 
fitting  for  the  formation  of  such  an  estimate,  than  this 
age  of  progress  and  this  land  of  freedom  ! 

Shelley  was  born  at  Field  Place,  in  the  county  of 
Sussex,  on  the  4th  of  August,  1792.  His  father  was 
Sir  Timothy  Shelley,  a  gentleman  of  property  and  high 

*  The  Poetical  Works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  By  Mrs.  Shelley  : 
4  vols.,  morocco.  London,  1839. 

From  the  Democratic  Rerviecwt  December,  1843. 


1 1 2  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 

family  distinction,  who  traced  his  remote  ancestry  to 
the  chivalrous  and  poetical  Sir  Philip  Sidney.  As  a 
child,  Shelley  appears  to  have  been  delicate  and  sensi 
tive  to  a  painful  extreme,  ardent  in  his  affections,  and 
tenderly  alive  to  the  influences  of  nature.  The  resi 
dence  of  his  friends,  amid  the  stillness  and  beauty  of 
rural  scenes,  early  impressed  him  with  a  love  for  tran 
quil  and  domestic  enjoyments.  He  has  himself,  in  the 
Revolt  of  Islam,  touchingly  described  those  aspects  of 
mankind  and  nature,  which  were  the  first  to  mould  his 
young  imagination. 

"  The  star-light  smile  of  children,  the  sweet  looks, 

Of  women,  the  fair  breast  from  which  I  fed, 
The  murmur  of  the  unreposing  brooks, 

And  the  green  light,  which  shifting  overhead, 
Some  tangled  bower  of  vine  around  me  shed, 

The  shells  on  the  sea-sand  and  the  wild-flowers, 
The  lamp-light  through  the  rafters  cheerly  spread, 

And  on  the  twining  flax — in  life's  young  hours, 
These  sights  and  sounds  did  nurse  my  spirit-folded 
powers." 

These — the  friends  of  his  youth,  his  mother,  the 
home  circle,  and  the  green  and  sunny  looks  of  outward 
nature — were  his  earliest  teachers.  He  was,  under 
their  mild  discipline,  gentle,  studious,  warm-hearted, 
and  contemplative.  The  stream  of  his  life  flowed  on, 
like  the  brooks  near  which  he  wandered  and  dreamed, 
in  silent  and  cheerful  harmony. 

But  the  placidity  of  the  current  was  destined  soon  to 
be  ruffled  by  rough  winds.  His  avidity  for  knowledge, 
and  the  premature  growth  of  his  mind,  fitted  him,  at 
a  greener  age  than  usual,  for  the  preparatory  studies  of 
Eton.  When  he  was  sent  thither,  the  trials  of  his 
life  began.  His  career  in  that  seat  of  learning  was  a 


Percy  By s she  Shelley.  113 

series  of  disappointments.  Burning  with  a  zeal  for 
truth,  and  expecting  to  find  companions  willing,  like 
himself,  to  devote  days  and  nights  to  the  pursuit  of  it, 
he  was  mortified  to  discover  that  the  votaries  of  learning 
could  be  filled  with  a  spirit  of  worldliness  and  false  am 
bition.  This  was  the  first  revulsion  which  his  feelings 
received  ;  and  the  intensity  of  it  was  increased  when  he 
was  made  the  victim  of  that  disgraceful  custom  called 
fagging,  which  compels  a  certain  class  of  the  students 
to  wait  as  servants  upon  the  others  !  Shelley  had  too 
much  pride  and  independence  to  submit  to  such  a  deg 
radation.  He  refused  to  "fag,"  and  he  was  conse 
quently  treated,  with  arrogance,  and  even  despotism. 
His  spirit,  sensitive  as  it  was,  was  no  less  firm.  Neither 
the  cruel  jibes  of  his  fellows,  nor  menaces  of  punish 
ment  on  the  part  of  his  superiors,  could  bend  a  will 
whose  single  law  was  the  self-imposed  law  of  truth.  He 
rejected  an  obedience  which  could  only  be  performed 
at  the  expense  of  self-respect.  It  was  not  long,  there 
fore,  before  he  was  removed  from  Eton  school.  He  was 
afterward  sent  to  Oxford  College,  which  he  soon  found 
as  uncongenial  as  the  school  had  been.  His  ap 
pearance  there  must  have  been  like  that  of  a  stray 
beam  of  light  amid  the  dust  and  darkness  of  an  old, 
cloistered  hall.  Slight  and  fragile  of  figure,  youthful 
even  among  those  who  were  all  young,  retired  and 
thoughtful,  yet  enthusiastic,  pursuing  with  eagerness  all 
branches  of  science,  and  exploring,  with  the  impet 
uosity  of  first  impressions,  whatever  struck  his  fancy 
as  novel  or  useful,  he  found  the  college  only  a  contin 
uation,  on  a  larger  scale,  of  the  school.  The  selfishness, 
tyranny,  and  falsehood  which  had  shocked  him  at  the 
one,  he  also  found  at  the  other.  Was  it  not  natural 
that  he  should  contract  an  aversion  to  the  society  of  his 
fellows  ?  Taking  no  pleasure  in  the  gross  and  bois- 


H4  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

terous  enjoyments  of  those  about  him,  he  retired  to  the 
fellowship  of  books  and  his  own  thoughts.  He  be 
came  enamored  of  solitary  reading,  solitary  rambles, 
solitary  experiments.  Even  the  necessary  usages  of 
discipline  grew  to  be  irksome  to  him.  He  could  not 
endure  the  servitude  of  regular  hours  and  established 
forms.  An  overfine  notion  of  freedom  brought  him  in 
conflict  with  masters  and  laws.  He  was  corrected  ;  but 
instead  of  being  corrected  by  gentle  methods,  he  was 
used  with  severity  and  imperiousness.  His  impatience 
was  not  subdued,  but  aggravated,  by  this  unnecessary 
rigor,  and  he  passed  on  to  other,  and  still  more  offen 
sive  acts  of  independence. 

At  the  same  time,  his  restless  desire  of  knowledge 
had  brought  him  acquainted  with  the  bold  speculations 
of  the  French  philosophers.  As  might  have  been  ex 
pected  in  a  youth  consumed  with  zeal  for  freedom 
and  justice,  he  was  convinced  by  their  reasonings  and 
captivated  by  their  promises.  He  rejected  the  more 
commonly  received  opinions  in  politics  and  religion  ; 
but  too  honest  and  fearless  to  hold  his  new  faith  stealth 
ily,  he  openly  declared  his  convictions,  and  sought  to 
make  proselytes  to  his  creed.  He  was  seized  with  an 
"ambition  to  reform  the  world."  He  threw  down  the 
gauntlet  of  defiance  at  the  feet  of  his  teachers,  and 
challenged  them  to  an  encounter  of  reason,  on  such 
normal  questions  as  the  truth  of  Christianity  and  the 
being  of  a  God.  A  student  who  thus  formally  set  him 
self  up  as  a  teacher  of  atheism,  which  he  hurled  in  proud 
scorn  at  the  heads  of  his  professors,  could  not,  of  course, 
be  tolerated  in  a  secluded  academical  community.  He 
was  again  made  the  subject  of  discipline,  and  deliberately 
expelled  from  a  society  whose  prejudices  he  had  as 
saulted,  and  whose  anthorities  he  had  wantonly  con 
temned. 


Percy  By s she  Shelley.  '  1 1 5 

This  event  exasperated  and  embittered  his  mind  to 
an  extreme  of  almost  madness.  He  was  only-  con 
firmed  in  his  false  but  sincere  convictions  by  what  he 
esteemed  the  despotism  of  his  enemies.  He  came  to 
regard  himself  as  a  victim  of  oppression.  He  ceased 
to  respect  and  love  those  whose  main  arguments  had 
been  force,  whose  only  replies  to  his  appeals  were  exe 
crations  and  reproaches,  who  shut  him  out  from  their 
sympathies,  and  branded  him  as  a  reprobate  and  a 
criminal.  There  was,  undoubtedly,  much  morbid  ex 
aggeration  in  all  this — yet  it  had  its  effect  in  driving  him 
further  from  the  religion  to  which  most  erroneously  it 
was  intended  to  bring  him  back.  Religion  to  him  no 
longer  wore  an  aspect  of  loveliness  and  charity,  but 
was  associated  in  his  mind  with  falsehood,  intolerance, 
and  hatred. 

Entertaining  such  feelings,  Shelley  was  not  the  man 
to  shrink  from  giving  them  definite  form  and  shape. 
Filled,  at  the  same  time,  with  a  sentimental  compassion 
for  his  fellow-men,  he  mourned  over  the  injustice, 
wrong,  and  misery  of  human  society.  He  fancied  that 
he  everywhere  saw  the  wicked  triumphing  and  the 
righteous  ground  to  the  earth.  The  whole  history  of 
mankind,  indeed,  struck  his  fevered  sensibilities  as  one 
continuous  chronicle  of  woe,  want,  wretchedness,  on 
one  hand,  and  of  blood-stained  tyranny  on  the  other. 

"He  heard,  as  all  have  heard,  life's  various  story, 

And  in  no  careless  heart  transcribed  the  tale, 
But,  from  the  sneers  of  men  who  had  grown  hoary, 

In  shame  and  scorn,  from  groans  of  crowds  made  pale 
By  famine,  from  a  mother's  desolate  wail 

For  her  polluted  child,  from  innocent  blood 
Poured  on  the  earth,  and  brows  anxious  and  pale 

With  the  heart's  warfare ;   did  he  gather  food 
To  feed  his  many  thoughts."     *     *     * 


1 1 6  Percy  By s she   Shelley. 

In  this  spirit, he  composed  his  first  poem,  Queen 
Mab.,  Although  it  was  not  published  until  several 
years  afterward,  and  then  surreptitiously,  it  suits  our 
plan  to  speak  a  word  of  it  here. 

Queen  Mab  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  productions  of  youthful  intellect.  The 
author  was  but  seventeen  when  he  wrote  it,  yet  in  bold 
ness  of  thought,  vigor  of  imagination,  and  intensity  of 
language,  it  displays  the  maturest  power.  Resembling 
Southey's  Thalaba  in  metre  and  general  form,  it  is  su 
perior  to  that  poem  in  wild  grandeur  and  pathos.  The 
versification,  though  often  strained  and  elaborate,  is, 
for  the  most  part,  melodious.  Its  narrative  portions 
are  well  sustained,  while  the  descriptions  are,  if  we 
may  so  express  it,  hideously  faithful.  It  is  easy  to  per 
ceive,  throughout,  however,  that  the  writer's  ungov 
ernable  sensibilities  ran  away  with  his  other  faculties. 
In  the  fragmentary  state,  indeed,  in  which  it  is  given  to 
us  in  the  later  editions,  there  are  long  passages  which 
are  merely  rhapsodical.  Yet  it  has  one  broad,  deep, 
pervading  moral  object — a  shout  of  defiance  sent  up  by 
an  unaided  stripling  against  the  powers  and  principali 
ties  of  a  world  of  wrong.  Every  page  is  a  fiery  protest 
against  the  frauds  and  despotisms  of  priest  and  king. 
Like  the  outburst  of  a  mass  of  flame  from  a  covered 
and  pent  up  crater,  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  struggle  of 
nature  amid  the  fiercest  wails  to  escape  from  oppres 
sion.  Its  irregular  convulsive  movements,  its  lurid 
and  dreadful  pictures,  alternating  with  passages  of 
mild  beauty  and  soft  splendor,  seem  like  the  protracted 
battle  of  Life  with  Death,  of  Giant  Hope  with  Giant 
Despair.  The  blasphemy  and  atheism  of  it  are  the 
tempestuous  writhings  of  a  pure  and  noble  spirit,  torn 
and  tossed  between  the  contending  winds  and  waves  of 
a  heart  full  of  Love  and  a  head  full  of  Doubt. 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  1 1 7 

It  was  never  the  intention  of  Shelley  to  publish  this 
indiscieet  and  immature  effort  of  his  genius.  But  the 
unfortunate  notoriety  which  certain  events  in  his  do 
mestic  life  had  procured  him,  induced  a  piratical  book 
seller  to  give  it  to  the  world.  When  it  did  appear,  he 
wrote  a  note  to  the  London  Examiner,  disclaiming 
much  of  what  it  contained. 

The  domestic  events  to  which  we  refer,  were  his 
marriage  and  separation  from  his  first  wife.  We  speak 
of  them  only  so  far  as  the  knowledge  of  them  is  neces 
sary  to  the  right  understanding  of  his  poetry  and  char 
acter.  In  very  early  life — some  of  his  friends  say, 
impelled  by  interested  advisers — he  married  a  young 
woman,  whose  tastes  he  soon  found  altogether  unsuit 
able  to  his  own,  and  from -whom,  after  the  birth  of  two 
children,  he  separated.  A  few  years  subsequent  to 
this  voluntary  divorce  the  wife  committed  suicide  ;  not, 
however,  before  Shelley  had  united  himself  to  another 
woman.  This  woman  was  one  of  illustrious  birth, 
being  the  daughter  of  Mary  Wollstoncraft  and  William 
Godwin,  and  inheriting  in  some  measure  the  splendid 
abilities  of  both  parents  ;  but  great  as  she  was  in  her 
self,  and  glorious  as  were  the  associations  that  radiated 
around  her  history,  there  was  no  defence  for  their  con 
duct  while  his  first  wife  lived. 

But  the  most  melancholy  part  of  this  tragedy  was  the 
catastrophe  enacted  in  the  court  of  chancery,  under  the 
presidency  of  Lord  Eldon.  The  children  of  Shelley's 
first  marriage,  to  whom  he  was  devotedly  attached,  were 
taken  from  him,  on  the  ground  that  his  opinions  ren 
dered  him  incompetent  to  provide  for  their  education. 
This  wicked  act  of  tyranny,  this  shameless  violation  of 
the  most  sacred  ties  of  the  heart,  filled  the  cup  of 
Shelley's  woe.  He  never  forgave  the  injustice,  but  to 


i  i  8  Percy  Bysske  Shelley. 

the  hour  of  his  death  felt  the  keen  and  cruel  pangs  of 
the  blow. 

Shelley,  before  these  events,  had  been  living  with  his 
second  wife  on  the  Continent.  He  had  already  angered 
his  family,  and  been  exiled  from  their  protection  and 
sympathy.  It  is  just,  however,  to  say  that  this  aban 
donment  did  not  take  place  without  attempts  on  their 
part  to  reclaim  him  from  his  errors.  One  of  them 
made  him  the  offer  of  an  immense  fortune  if  he  would 
enter  the  House  of  Commons,  to  sustain  the  cause  of 
the  Whigs.  But  he  despised  alike  the  money  and  the 
motive,  preferring  the  life  of  an  outcast,  true  to  his 
convictions,  to  that  of  the  idol  of  a  party,  false  to  his 
own  soul.  The  spirit  which  seems  to  have  actuated 
him  on  this  occasion,  was  the  spirit  of  his  whole  life. 
He  held  no  half-faced  fellowship  with  God  and  Mam 
mon.  What  he  believed  he  acted  out,  leaving  to  the 
developments  of  time  the  issues  of  his  conduct. 

Shelley's  first  acknowledged  poem,  Alastor,  or  the 
Spirit  of  Solitude,  written  in  1815.  exhibits  his  mind  in 
a  more  subdued  state  than  that  in  which  he  must  have 
composed  Queen  Mab.  He  was  then  residing  at  Bish- 
opgate  Heath,  near  Windsor  Forest,  made  immortal 
in  the  early  lays  of  Pope.  There,  in  the  enjoyment  of 
the  companionship  of  cultivated  friends,  reading  the 
poets  of  the  day,  and  visiting  the  magnificent  woodland 
and  forest  scenery  to  be  met  with  in  a  voyage  to  the 
source  of  the  Thames,  several  months  of  health  and 
tranquil  happiness  glided  away.  The  more  boisterous 
excitability  of  earlier  years  gave  place  to  habits  of  calm 
•meditation  and  self-communion,  while  the  vicissitudes 
and  disappointments  which  had  already  checkered  his 
young  life,  tempered,  no  doubt,  his  exalted  hopes  and 
restrained  the  impetuosity  of  his  zeal. 

In  Alastor,   accordingly,  we  find  the  traces  of  more 


Percy  Bysshe   Shelley.  1 1 9 

mature  and  deeper  inward  reflection.  It  contains  none 
of  those  intense  and  irrepressible  bursts  of  mingled 
rage  and  love,  which  are  at  once  the  merit  and  defect  of 
Queen  Mab  ;  but  is  a  quiet  and  beautiful  picture  of  the 
progressive  condition  of  the  mind  of  a  poet.  It  rep 
resents,  to  borrow  the  language  of  his  preface  of  1835, 
"a  youth  of  uncorrupted  feelings  and  adventurous 
genius,  led  forth  by  an  imagination  inflamed  and  puri 
fied  through  familiarity  with  all  that  is  excellent  and 
majestic,  to  the  contemplation  of  the  universe.  He 
drinks  deep  of  the  fountains  of  knowledge,  and  is  still 
insatiate.  The  magnificence  and  beauty  of  the  eternal 
world  sink  profoundly  into  the  frame  of  his  conceptions, 
and  afford  to  their  modifications  a  variety  not  to  be  ex 
hausted.  So  long  as  it  is  possible  for  his  desires  to 
point  toward  objects  thus  infinite  and  unmeasured,  he 
is  joyous  and  self-possessed.  But  the  period  arises  when 
those  objects  cease  to  suffice.  His  mind  is  at  length 
suddenly  awakened,  and  thirsts  for  an  intercourse  with 
an  intelligence  similar  to  itself ;  he  images  to  himself  the 
being  he  loves,  and  the  vision  unites  all  of  wonderful, 
wise,  and  beautiful,  which  the  poet,  the  philosopher,  or 
the  lover  could  depicture."  He,  however,  wanders  in 
vain  over  the  populous  and  desolated  portions  of  the 
earth,  in  search  for  the  prototype  of  his  conceptions.. 
Neither  earth,  nor  air,  nor  yet  the  pale  realms  of 
dreams  can  accord  him  the  being  of  his  ideal  love. 
Weary  at  last  of  the  present,  and  blasted  by  disappoint 
ment,  he  seeks  the  retreat  of  a  solitary  recess  and  yields 
his  spirit  to  death. 

Such  is  the  story  of  a  poem,  which,  as  much,  if  not 
more  than  any  of  his  works,  is  characteristic  of  the 
author.  It  is  tranquil,  thoughtful,  and  solemn,  min 
gling  the  exultation  caused  by  the  sunny  and  beautiful 
aspects  of  Nature,  with  the  deep,  religious  feeling  that 


I2O  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 

arises  from  the  contemplation  of  her  more  stern  and 
majestic  moods,  and  with  the  brooding  thoughts  and 
sad  or  stormful  passion  of  a  heart  seeking  through  the 
earth  for  objects  to  satisfy  the  restlessness  of  its  infinite 
desires.  Full  of  a  touching  and  mournful  eloquence, 
the  impression  it  leaves  is  that  of  a  soft  and  chastened 
melancholy. 

In  the  summer  of  this  year  Shelley  paid  another  visit 
to  the  Continent,  where  he  met  Lord  Byron,  with  whom 
— an  ' '  uncongenial  spirit" — he  spent  the  greater  part  of 
the  time  on  the  shores  of  the  Lake  of  Geneva.  He 
seems  to  have  wriiten  little  this  year,  besides  a  few  shorter 
pieces,  among  which  are  the  Hymn  to  Intellectual 
Beauty,  and  the  Mount  Blanc.  But  the  following  year 
he  returned  to  England,  and  though  heart-harrowing 
events,  referred  to  above,  awaited  him  there,  though  his 
sufferings  from  illness  grew  more  frequent  and  severe, 
his  mental  activity  revived.  The  very  weakness  that 
depressed  his  physical  powers,  appeared  to  enliven  and 
incite  his  brain.  Pain,  which  kept  his  mind  awake  and 
restless,  quickened  his  sympathies  with  the  afflictions  of 
others. 

He  was  established  at  Marlow,  near  London,  a 
sequestered  abode  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames.  He 
4ed  a  meditative  and  studious  life,  but  his  meditations 
and  studies  were  of  a  nature  unlike  those  of  most  se 
cluded  scholars,  for  the  claims  of  his  fellow-men  were 
not  forgotten.  Floating  quietly  down  the  stream  of  the 
river,  under  the  rich  beech-groves  of  Bisham,  or  along 
the  exuberant  and  picturesque  meadows  of  Marlow,  his 
head  was  filled  with  the  gathering  visions,  and  his  heart 
expanded  with  the  noble  affections  that  were  destined  to 
give  immortality  to  the  Revolt  of  Islam.  It  was  finished 
in  little  more  than  six  months,  and  given  to  mankind. 

The    "Revolt  of     Islam,"   though    by    no    means 


Percy  By s she   Shelley.  1 2 1 

Shelley's  greatest  work,  if  his  largest,  is  the  one  which 
will  endear  him  most  strongly  to  sympathetic  minds.  It 
is  written  in  twelve  cantos  of  the  Spenserian  stanza, 
and  in  his  first  design  was  to  be  entitled  "  Laon  and 
Cythna,  or  the  Revolution  of  the  Golden  City,"  thereby 
implying  that  it  was  intended  to  be  a  story  of  passion, 
and  not  a  picture  of  more  mighty  and  broadly  interest 
ing  events.  As  he  advanced  in  his  work,  however,  as 
the  heavy  woes  of  mankind  pressed  and  absorbed  his 
heart,  the  mere  individual  figures,  around  which  the 
narrative  gathers,  dwindled  in  importance,  and  he  poured 
out  the  strength  of  his  soul  in  the  description  of  scenes 
and  incidents  involving  the  fates  of  multitudes  and 
races.  The  poem  may  have  lost  in  interest  as  a  narra 
tive  by  the  change,  but  it  has  gained  much  as  a  poem. 
It  is  now  a  gallery  of  glowing  and  spirit-stirring  pictures, 
painting — sometimes  in  dim  and  silvery  outline,  and 
sometimes  in  broad  masses  of  black  and  white — "the 
most  interesting  conditions  of  a  great  people  in  the  pas 
sage  from  slavery  to  freedom." 

The  first  canto,  like  the  introduction  to  an  overture, 
runs  over,  in  brief  but  graceful  and  airy  strains,  the 
grand  harmonies  that  are  to  compose  the  burden  of  the 
music.  After  illustrating  with  great  beauty  the  growth 
of  a  young  mind  in  its  aspirations  after  liberty,  and  how 
the  impulses  of  a  single  spirit  may  spread  the  impatience 
of  oppression  until  it  takes  captive  and  influences  every 
soul,  the  poet  proceeds  at  once  to  his  topic — the  awak 
ening  of  a  whole  nation  from  degradation  to  dignity  ;  the 
dethronement  of  its  tyrants  ;  the  exposure  of  the  relig 
ious  frauds  and  political  quackeries  by  which  kings  and 
hirelings  delude  the  multitude  into  quiet  subjection  ; 
the  tranquil  happiness,  moral  elevation,  and  mutual 
love  of.  a  people  made  free  by  their  own  patriotic  en 
deavors  ;  the  treachery  and  barbarism  of  hired  soldiers  ; 
6 


122  Percy  Bysshe  SJielley. 

the  banding  together  of  despots  without  to  sustain  the 
cause  of  tyrants  at  home  ;  the  desperate  onset  of  the 
armies  of  the  allied  dynasties  ;  the  cruel  murder  and 
expulsion  of  the  patriots,  and  the  installation  of  despot 
ism,  with  its  train  of  war,  pestilence,  and  famine.  It 
then  closes  with  prophecies  for  the  sure  and  final  reign 
of  freedom  and  virtue,  which  may  be  called  the  choral 
hymn  of  struggling  nations. 

In  this  argument,  to  use  the  phrase  of  the  older 
poets,  Shelley  had  a  high  moral  aim.  We  refer  not 
merely  to  what  he  himself  describes  as  an  attempt  "to 
enlist  the  harmony  of  metrical  language,  etherial  com 
binations  of  fancy,  and  refined  and  sudden  transitions 
of  passion  in  the  cause  of  liberality,  or  to  kindle  in  the 
bosom  of  his  readers  a  virtuous  enthusiasm  for  those 
doctrines  of  liberty  and  justice,  that  faith  and  hope  in 
something  good,  which  neither  violence,  nor  misrepre 
sentation,  nor  prejudice  can  ever  totally  extinguish  ;" 
but  to  that  fixed  purpose  with  which  he  has  avoided  the 
obvious  conclusion  that  an  ordinary  mind  would  have 
given  to  the  poem.  It  ends,  as  we  said,  with  the  tri 
umphs  of  despotism.  What  Shelley  wished  to  teach 
by  this,  was  the  lesson,  so  necessary  in  that  age,  when 
the  hopes  of  mankind  had  been  crushed  by  the  disas 
trous  events  of  the  French  Revolution,  that  every  re 
volt  against  the  oppression  of  tyranny,  that  every  strug 
gle  for  the  rights  of  man,  though  for  the  time  it  might 
be  unsuccessful,  though  it  might  fail  in  its  resistance  of 
arbitrary  power,  was,  in  the  end,  worth  the  effort.  It 
destroyed  the  sanctity  that  surrounded  and  shielded  the 
dogmas  of  the  past ;  it  broke  the  leaden  weight  of  au 
thority  ;  it  kindled  fear  in  the  breast  of  the  oppressors, 
by  awakening  among  the  people  a  knowledge  of  their 
power ;  and  it  strengthened  the  confidence  of  men  in 
each  other,  while  it  filled  them  with  visions  and  hopes 


Percy  ByssJic  SJielley.  123 

of  the  speedy  prevalence  of  a  more  universal  justice  and 
love. 

No  lesson  could  then  have  been  more  needed  by  the 
world.  The  excesses  and  apparent  failure  of  the 
French  people  had  frightened  even  the  warmest  lovers 
of  freedom  from  their  early  faith.  They  had  scarcely 
foreseen,  in  the  outset,  that  the  weight  of  long  centuries 
of  oppression  could  not  be  thrown  off  without  terrific 
efforts.  At  the  first  demonstration,  therefore,  that  the 
populace  were  really  in  earnest,  the  flush  fled  from 
their  faces  and  they  gazed  upon  the  scene  aghast  and 
trembling.  They  were  seized  with  a  panic  of  dread. 
They  deprecated  what  they  had  before  abetted.  To 
the  wild  exultation  which  hailed  the  opening  of  the  out 
break,  there  succeeded  a  feeling  of  despondency  and 
gloom.  The  people  were  no  longer  the  objects  of  sym 
pathy  and  hope,  but  the  victims  of  misgiving  and  dis 
trust.  Men  who  had  once  espoused  their  cause,  now 
doubted  their  capacity  of  self-government.  An  uneasy 
suspicion  was  diffused  that  the  principles  of  liberty  and 
justice,  having  so  signally  failed  in  one  instance,  were 
never  to  be  tried  in  a  second. 

But  in  the  number  of  these  Shelley  was  not  included. 
To  him,  the  French  Revolution  was  not  a  failure.  Its 
atrocities  and  crimes,  so  far  from  diminishing  his  at 
tachment  to  free  principles,  cemented  and  strengthened 
it.  He  saw  in  every  frantic  outrage,  in  every  unnatural 
vice,  in  the  mummeries,  the  violences,  and  the  excesses, 
only  additional  arguments  for  a  milder  and  more  benevo 
lent  government.  "If  the  Revolution,"  says  he,  "  had 
been  prosperous,  then  misrule  and  superstition  would 
lose  half  their  claims  to  our  abhorrence,  as  fetters  which 
the  captive  can  unlock  with  the  slightest  motion  of  his 
fingers,  and  which  do  not  eat  with  poisonous  rust  into 
his  soul."  The  evils  of  that  frightful  upturning  of  so- 


124  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

ciety  seemed  to  him,  as  they  now  seem  to  every  observ 
ant  mind,  transient,  while  the  good  was  durable. 

Under  such  convictions  he  prepared  his  poem.  Bold 
as  it  is,  in  many  of  the  sentiments,  it  is  a  noble  monu 
ment  to  the  loftiness  of  his  aims,  the  brilliancy  of  his 
imagination,  the  wealth  of  love  in  his  heart,  and  the 
breadth  and  power  of  his  intellect.  It  is  an  armory 
from  which  the  young  enthusiasts  of  many  generations 
to  come  may  draw  their  weapons,  in  the  assurance  that 
they  are  of  tried  temper  and  exquisite  polish.  We  have 
never  read  it  without  feeling  our  soul  stirred  as  with  the 
sound  of  a  trumpet — it  has  enlarged  our  thoughts,  ex 
panded  and  warmed  our  affections,  quickened  our  pur 
poses  of  good,  and  filled  us  with  an  unquenchable 
flame  of  philanthropy  and  love. 

In  1818,  Shelley  left  England,  never  to  return. 
That  divine  region,  "  the  paradise  of  exiles,"  Italy,  be 
came  his  chosen  residence.  Under  the  influence  of  its 
beautiful  climate,  and  the  inspiration  of  its  scenery,  his 
poetical  life  seemed  to  have  received  a  new  impulse. 
Three  subjects  presented  themselves  to  his  mind  as  the 
ground-works  of  lyrical  dramas  :  the  first,  the-touching 
story  of  Tasso  ;  the  second,  the  woes  and  endurance  of 
Job  ;  and  the  third,  the  Prometheus  Unbound.  With 
the  instinct  of  genius,  or  led  by  his  growing  delight  in 
the  Greek  dramatists,  he  selected  the  last  of  the  three 
as  the  one  best  suited  to  his  purpose.  In  the  very 
cheice  of  the  subject,  he  betrays  the  tendencies  of  his 
nature.  There  is  not  in  the  whole  round  of  thought 
any  real  or  imaginary  personage  so  well  fitted  to  dra 
matic  or  epic  representation  as  Prometheus.  The  my 
thology  of  his  existence  is  the  grandest  fable  that  the 
human  mind  ever  conceived.  In  the  Lear  of  Shakspeare 
we  behold  a  grand  conception  ; — we  have  a  man, — a 
noble,  towering  man — yet  passionate  and  weak, — bat- 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  125 

tling,  heedless  of  the  war  of  the  elements  around  him, 
with  the  wilder  storm  of  emotion  in  his  own  breast. 
Again  ;  in  the  Satan  of  Milton  we  see  the  demigod,  fierce, 
defiant,  unconquerable,  wage  a  proud  strife  with  the 
Omnipotent ;  but  while  we  pity  his  fancied  wrongs  and 
sympathize  with  his  ambition,  the  nature  of  the  com 
bat  forbids  us  to  applaud  his  courage,  and  the  exhibition 
of  his  envy,  falsehood,  and  revenge  destroys  our  admi 
ration.  But  in  the  Prometheus  of  the  ancient  fabulists, 
we  behold  an  Innocent  One  exposed  to  the  oppressions 
of  evil,  for  the  good  which  he  had  conferred  upon 
others  ;  bearing  for  ages,  without  complaint,  the  tor 
tures  of  tyranny ;  a  spirit  full  of  godlike  fortitude  and 
hope,  warring  with  the  gods  ;  a  calm  sufferer,  exempt 
from  bitterness  or  hatred,  though  sustaining  the  foulest 
wrongs  that -Infinite  Power  can  inflict;  an  immortal 
nature  triumphing  over  mortal  pangs  ;  a  moral  will 
rising  superior  to  the  agonies  of  physical  torment  ; 
embodied  goodness  and  beauty,  recovering  from  the 
struggle  of  centuries  of  darkness  into  the  clear  light  of 
Heaven,  and  diffusing  universal  joy  through  the  realms 
of  space. 

In  the  treatment  of  the  ancient  fable  Shelley  has  seen 
fit  to  alter  it  so  as  to  adapt  it  to  his  more  exalted  con 
ceptions  of  the  character  of  its  hero.  Prometheus,  as  we 
gather  his  story  from  the  ancient  writers,  was  chained 
to  the  rock  by  Jupiter,  for  having  bequeathed  to  man 
kind  the  gift  of  knowledge.  But  there  was  in  the  pos 
session  of  the  Titan  the  secret  of  a  prophecy  which  it 
much  concerned  the  perpetuity  of  Jupiter's  kingdom 
that  he  should  know.  On  condition  that  this  should 
be  revealed  to  him,  he  offered  the  sufferer  a  full  par 
don  for  his  primitive  crime.  The  Titan  resists,  and  in 
the  sternness  and  stubborn  power  of  this  resistance,  the 
moral  sublimity  of  the  myth  consists  ;  but  after  enduring 


126  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 

the  inflictions  of  the  god  for  ages,  he  purchases 
freedom  from  torture  by  communicating  the  secret. 
This  latter  part  of  the  fable  Shelley  rejects.  His  Pro 
metheus  is  true  to  himself  to  the  last,  since,  to  have 
made  him  "unsay  his  high  language,  and  quail  before 
his  successful  and  perfidious  adversary,"  would  have 
been  reconciling  the  champion^of  mankind  with  its  op- 
presser.  He  had  a  nobler  aim — 

"To  suffer  woe,  which  Hope  thinks  infinite; 
To  forgive  wrongs,  darker  than  death  or  night; 

To  defy  Power,  which  seems  omnipotent ; 
To  love  and  bear ;  to  hope  till  Hope  creates 
From  its  own  wreck  the  thing  it  contemplates  ; 

Neither  to  change,  nor  falter,  nor  repent : 
This  was  thy  glory,  Titan  !  'tis  to  be, 
Good,  great,  and  joyous,  beautiful  and  free, 
This  is  alone  Life,  Joy,  Empire  and  Victory  !" 

It  was  the  lost  drama  of  ^Eschylus  which  suggested 
this  poem  to  Shelley.  In  the  earlier  portions  of  it, 
where  he  describes  the  trials  of  the  Titan,  he  has  imi 
tated  the  lofty  grandeur  and  solemn  majesty  of  the 
Grecian  master.  But  to  avoid  the  charge  of  mere  imi 
tation,  he  has  varied  the  story,  and  enlarged  the  ground 
work  of  plot  and  incident.  It  would  be  an  exaggera 
tion  to  say  that  he  had  rivalled  the  sublimity  of  the 
Father  of  theDramatists ;  but  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  assert 
the  moral  superiority  of  his  conceptions.  He  has  not 
the  force,  the  strength,  and  the  awful  and  imposing 
sternness  of  his  robust  and  rugged  model — but  he  has, 
we  think,  more  delicacy,  softness,  and  elegance.  In 
deed,  the  lyrical  parts  of  the  drama  are  only  surpassed 
in  graceful  ease  and  harmony  by  Sophocles.  They 
rise  upon  the  ear  like  strains  of  sweet  melody,  ravish 
ing  it  with  delight,  and  leaving,  after  they  have  passed 


Percy  ByssJie  Shelley.  127 

away,  the  sense  of  a  keen  but  dreamy  ecstasy.  For 
delicacy  and  beauty,  nothing  in  the  range  of  verse  is 
finer  than  the  description  of  the  flight  of  the  Hours — 
not  even  the  imagery  in  which  lone  and  Panthea  dis 
course  to  each  other  while  listening  to  the  music  of  the 
rolling  worlds.  The  whole  leaves  the  impression  of  a 
noble  oratorio,  expressive  of  the  Life  of  Humanity  in  its 
passage  from  early  darkness  through  pain  and  strife, 
through  weariness  and  anguish,  to  the  overflowing  joy 
and  sunshine  of  its  maturer  development. 

During  the  following  year,  the  tragedy  of  the  Cenci 
appeared.  It  has  since  attained  so  wide  a  popularity, 
and  been  so  often  criticised,  both  in  England  and 
among  the  Germans,  that  we  shall  have  little  to  say  of 
it  in  this  place.  It  has  more  of  direct  human  interest 
in  it  than  any  other  of  the  author's  poems,  but,  like  all 
the  rest,  it  serves  to"  display  his  character.  His  keen 
insight  into  the  workings  of  the  human  heart — his 
dread  of  evil— his  hatred  of  oppression — and  above  all, 
his  quick  sympathy  with  the  delicate  and  graceful  emo 
tions  of  the  female  nature,  are  exhibited  in  language 
of  unsurpassed  fidelity  and  force.  Through  all  the 
developments  of  the  terrible  story  there  appears  a  lofty, 
moral  aim,  not  taught,  as  is  the  case  with  Euripides,  in 
formal  declamations,  but  as  Shakspeare  teaches — by 
the  unfolding  of  an  actual  life — as  if  a  curtain  were 
lifted  suddenly  from  before  an  actual  scene,  to  reveal 
all  the  actors  in  their  living  and  breathing  reality.  As 
in  the  Prometheus,  he  had  shown  what  Will  could  ac 
complish  under  the  dominion  of  Love  ;  so~  in  the  Cenci 
he  showed  what  that  same  Will  could  do  when  under  the 
adverse  guidance  of  subversive  passions.  The  elder 
Cenci  is  the  personification  of  unbridled  Will.  Rich 
enough  to  indulge  every  desire,  and  yet  purchase  im 
punity  for  every  crime,  the  old  human  father,  opposing 


128  Percy  Bysske  Shelley. 

his  own  will,  in  bursts  of  tremendous  and  fearful  rage, 
to  the  will  of  the  Almighty  Father,  becomes  thereby  an 
incarnation  of  all  that  is  inhuman.  What  a  dreadful 
contrast  is  drawn  between  his  demoniacal  spirit  and 
that  of  his  angelic  daughter,  Beatrice,  the  lovely,  sin 
cere,  high-minded  woman,  formed  to  adorn  and  grace 
the  most  exalted  position,  but  bearing  about  a  load 
of  remediless  griefs,  of  unparalleled  sorrows  !  She  is 
purity  enveloped  in  a  cloud  of  falsehood  and  strange 
vice.  Herself  sportive  and  serene,  yet  the  victim  of 
unnatural  crimes  and  endless  woes.  "  Around  her  are 
the  curtains  of  dread  fate — no  lark-resounding  Heaven 
is  above  her — no  sunny  fields  before  her — no  passion 
throbs  in  her  breast" — but 

"  The  beautiful  blue  Heaven  is  flecked  with  blood. 
The  sunshine  on  the  floor  is  black  !     The  air 
Is  changed  to  vapors  such  as  the  dead  breathe 
In  channel  houses;" 

and  the  wronged  though  beautiful  maid  is  cut  off  from 
life  and  light  in  youth's  sweet  prime. 

We  must  here  close  our  remarks  upon  Shelley's  sepa 
rate  poems,  and  proceed  to  give  our  opinion  of  his 
general  character  as  a  poet.  Let  it  suffice  to  say  of  what 
he  has  written  at  a  date  subsequent  to  that  of  the  poems 
to  which  we  have  referred,  that  he  everywhere  mani 
fests  the  same  general  powers,  enriched  by  experience 
and  use.  We  should  like  to  have  spoken  in  detail  of  the 
"  Rosalind  and  Helen,"  that  touching  tale  of  the  suffer 
ings  of  woman  ;  of  the  "  Hellas,"  in  which  he  celebrates 
the  revival  of  the  ancient  spirit  of  Grecian  freedom,  with 
much  of  the  spirit  of  the  old  Greek  lyrical  poets  ;  of 
the  "Adonais,"  so  full  of  pensive  beauty;  of  the 
spiritual  "Prince  Athanase  ;"  of  the  wild  "Triumph 
of  Life;"  of  the  "  Ode  written  in  dejection  at  Naples," 


Percy  By s she  Shelley.  129 

most  pathetic  of  the  lyrics  of  melancholy ;  of  the 
"  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty/'  so  high  and  grand  in 
its  invocations  ;  of  the  "Skylark,"  in  the  profusion  and 
melody  of  which  the  author  rivals  the  bird  he  sings  ; 
and,  no  less,  of  those  translations  from  the  Greek, 
German,  and  Spanish,  which  are  among  the  best  speci 
mens  of  that  kind  of  composition  in  the  English  lan 
guage  ;  but  our  space  will  not  suffer  us  to  engage  in 
this  agreeable  task. 

What,  then,  are  the  claims  of  Shelley  as  a  poet? 
This  is  a  hard  question  to  answer  in  the  case  of  any 
poet,  and  particularly  hard  in  that  of  Shelley.  His 
poetry,  like  his  life,  is  set  round  by  so  many  prejudices, 
that  it  is  with  difficulty  the  critic  preserves  his  mind 
from  the  influence  of  common  opinion  on  one  side,  or 
the  exaggeration  of  a  reactive  sympathy  on  the  other. 
Shelley's  faults,  too,  are  so  nearly  allied  to  his  excel 
lences,  springing  as  they  do,  for  the  most  part,  from  the 
very  excess  of  his  intellectual  energy,  that  the  task  of 
discrimination  is  felt  to  be  an  embarrassing  one.  Aside 
from  these  considerations,  besides,  there  were  some 
notable  and  obvious  defects  in  the  very  structure  of  his 
mind.  These  are  shown  partly  in  his  use  of  a  peculiar 
language  and  diction,  but  chiefly  in  the  excessive  sub 
tlety  of  his  thought.  Words  were  often  used  by  him, 
not  in  their  common  or  obvious  meaning,  but  in  a 
sense  derived  from  remote  and  complicated  relations. 
He  indulges  in  such  phrases,  for  instance,  as  the 
"wingless-boat,"  meaning  thereby,  not  a  boat  without 
wings,  which  would  be  commonplace  enough,  but  a  boat 
propelled  by  some  mysterious  power  beyond  the  speed 
of  flight.  Again,  because  of  this  over-refinement  and 
too1  great  delicacy  of  perception,  his  descriptions  are  often 
'strangely  unreal.  They  seem  to  be  enveloped  in  a  hazy 
wavering  atmosphere,  as  if  they  were  not  actual  scenes, 
6* 


130  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

•but  the  combinations  of  a  remembered  dream.  One 
does  not  look  upon  them, ,  as  he  looks  upon  living 
nature,  when  he  stands  face  to  face  with  her  beauty  ; 
but  they  are  seen  through  a  gauzy  medium  of  memory, 
like  places  which  may  have  impressed  the  mind  in  the 
earliest  period  of  its  consciousness.  They  strike  us, 
in  the  same  way  as  those  .views  which  come  suddenly 
upon  us,  when  travelling  in  strange  lands,  as  something 
which  we  have  seen  before,  but  of  which  we  know 
neither  the  time  nor  place.  It  may  be  objected 
further,  that  his  imagery  possesses  too  much  of  dazzling 
glare  and  splendor.  It  is  seldom  sufficiently  subdued 
for  the  nature  of  the  subject.  This  fault,  however,  is 
the  common  fault  of  young  artists.  Their  pictures  are 
all  in  warm  colors.  We  believe  it  was  Sir  Thomas  Law 
rence  who  was  accustomed  to  say  to  his  pupils,  put  out 
the  lights.  Some  such  monitor  should  have  stood  over 
the  writing-desk  of  Shelley.  His  many-colored  fancy 
needed  frequent  chastisement.  Arrayed  in  gold  and 
lire,  the  objects  of  it  were  made  to  flame,  like  the  forest 
which  lies  between  our  eyes  and  the  horizon,  when 
both  trunks  and  leaves  are  lit  up  by  the  evening  sun. 

But  a  greater  fault  of  Shelley's  poetry  is  the  obscurity 
of  which  so  many  readers  complain.  His  more  enthu 
siastic  admirers,  we  are  aware,  answer,  that  as  much  of 
this  obscurity  may  lie  in  the  minds  of  the  readers  as  in 
the  mind  of  the  poet  ;  and  they  answer  with  no  little 
truth.  Yet  we  think  that  Shelley  is  chargeable  on  this 
score,  and  chargeable  because  the  fault  springs  from  a 
misuse  of  some  of  his  highest  powers.  It  takes  its  ori 
gin  from  two  peculiarities — from  the  exceeding  subjec 
tivity  of  his  mind,  of  which  we  have  just  spoken,  and 
the  exquisite  delicacy  of  his  imagination.  What  we 
mean  by  his  subjectivity  is  the  disposition  to  dwell  upon 
the  forms  and  processes  of  inward  thought  and  emo- 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  131 

tion,  rather  than  upon  those  of  the  external  world. 
Shelley  no  doubt  loved  the  external  world  ;  he  was  ever 
living  in  the  broad,  open  air,  under  the  wide  skies  ;  and 
was  keenly  alive  to  the  picturesque  and  harmonious  in 
Nature.  But  his  emotional  power  dominated  his  intel 
lectual  power.  He  was  thus  ever  proceeding  from  the 
centre  of  his  own  mind,  outward  to  the  visible  universe. 
He  was  ever  transferring  the  operations  of  his  feelings 
to  the  operations  of  Nature.  Of  this  tendency  he  was 
riot  himself  unaware.  "  The  imagery  which  I  have  em 
ployed,"  he  says  in  the  preface  to  Prometheus,  "will  be 
found,  in  many  instances,  to  have  been  drawn  from  the 
operations  of  the  human  mind,  or  those  external  actions 
by  which  they  are  expressed. "  An  appropriate  instance 
of  this  we  have  in  the  same  poem,  where  the  avalanche 
is  compared  to  the  thought,  not  the  thought  to  the 
avalanche,  reversing  the  usual  process  of  comparison. 
There  is  a  class  to  whom  this  kind  of  comparison  may 
appear  natural,  but  to  the  larger  number  of  men,  and 
those  even  intellectual  men,  it  is,  to  use  a  vulgar 
adage,  putting  the  cart  before  the  horse  ;  it  is  illustra 
ting  the  known  by  the  less  known  ;  it  is  an  attempt  to 
make  an  object  clear  and  intelligible,  by  comparing  it 
with  that  which  is  not  clear  and  intelligible. 

This  is  one  cause  of  Shelley's  obscurity  ;  but  a  more 
frequent  cause  is  the  excessive  subtlety  and  refinement 
of  his  imagination.  So  keen  was  his  intellectual  vision, 
that  he  saw  shapes  where  others  saw  none,  and  shades 
and  distinctions  of  shade  where,  to  others,  it  was  blank 
vacuity  or  darkness.  He  possessed,  in  an  eminent 
degree,  that  faculty  which  peoples  the  universe  with 
tenuous  and  gossamer  existences,  which  sees  a  faery 
world  in  drops  of  dew,  which  sports  with  the  crea 
tures  of  the  elements,  which  is  of  finer  insight  and  more 
spiritual  texture  than  the  brains  of  ordinary  mortals. 


132  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 

If  Shelley  has  erred  in  the  excessive  use  of  this  faculty, 
we  are  also  indebted  to  it  for  some  of  the  most  beauti 
ful  conceptions  that  ever  adorned  the  pages  of  poetry. 

But  we  pass  from  the  faults  of  Shelley  to  a  rapid  con 
sideration  of  his  excellences.  One  of  the  first  things 
to  be  observed  in  entering  upon  the  topic,  is  the  eleva 
ted  conception  which  he  had  formed,  and  always  strove 
to  carry  with  him,  of  the  true  function  and  destiny  of 
the  Poet.  The  vocation  of  the  bard  impressed  him  as 
the  highest  of  all  vocations.  "  Poetry,"  says  he,  in  a 
glowing  passage  of  an  exquisite  prose  composition, 
"  poetry  is,  indeed,  something  divine.  It  is  at  once 
the  centre  and  circumference  of  knowledge  :  it  is  that 
which  comprehends  all  science,  and  that  to  which  all 
science  must  be  referred.  It  is  at  the  same  time  the 
root  and  blossom  of  all  other  systems  of  thought ;  it 
is  that  from  which  all  spring  and  that  which  adorns 
all  ;  and  that  which,  if  blighted,  denies  the  fruit  and 
the  seed,  and  withholds  from  the  barren  world  the 
nourishment  and  the  succession  of  the  scions  of  the 
tree  of  life.  It  is  the  perfect  and  consummate  sur 
face  and  bloom  of  all  things  ;  it  is  as  the  odor  and  color 
of  the  rose  to  the  texture  of  the  elements  which  com 
pose  it,  as  the  form  and  splendor  of  unfaded  beauty  to  the 
secrets  of  anatomy  and  corruption."-  Again  he  says  : 
"  Poetry  is  the  record  of  the  best  and  happiest  moments 
of  the  happiest  and  best  minds" — "Poetry  turns  all 
things  to  loveliness.  It  exalts  the  beauty  of  that  which 
is  most  beautiful,  and  it  adds  beauty  to  that  which  is 
most  deformed  ;  it  marries  exultation  and  horror,  grief 
and  pleasure,  eternity  and  change  ;  it  subdues  to  union, 
under  its  light  yoke,  all  irreconcilable  things.  It  trans 
mutes  all  that  it  touches,  and  every  form  moving  with 
in  the  radiance  of  its  presence  is  changed  by  wondrous 
sympathy  to  an  incarnation  of  the  spirit  which  it 


Percy  By s she  Shelley.  133 

breathes  :  its  secret  alchemy  turns  to  potable  gold  the 
poisonous  waters  which  flow  from  death  through  life  ; 
it  strips  the  veil  of  familiarity  from  the  world  and  lays 
bare  the  naked  and  sleeping  beauty,  which  is  the  spirit 
of  its  forms." 

In  this  spirit  Shelley  composed  his  own  poems.  It 
would  be  absurd  to  rank  him  among  the  highest  of  the 
great  English  poets  as  an  artist,  although  it  would  not 
be  absurd  to  put  him  among  the  highest  in  other  re 
spects.  We  do  not  mean  that  he  was  altogether  defi 
cient  as  an  artist,  but  we  do  mean  that  the  qualities  of 
the  artist  were  not  those  which  predominated  in  him. 
The  opening  chorus  of  Hellas  alone,  not  to  refer  to 
other  instances,  would  prove  that  he  possessed  great 
artistic  capabilities  ;  yet  the  same  poem,  not  to  men 
tion  others,  would  also  prove  that  these  capabilities 
were  smothered  beneath  his  exuberance  of  thought  and 
imagery.  So,  the  skilfulness  with  which  he  has  used, 
in  Prince  Athanase,  the  lerza  rima  of  the  Italians,  and 
in  the  Witch  of  Atlas,  the  stanza  of  Pulci,  show  how  far 
he  could  have  been  successful  in  the  region  of  mere 
art,  but  he  would  not  submit  his  chainless  impulses  to 
the  laborious  discipline  of  Art.  When  the  leisure  and 
humor  for  such  discipline  allowed,  his  minor  lyrics  be 
tray  no  want  of  the  most  dexterous  and  versatile  power 
to  perfect  ;  but  in  general,  he  impetuously  tramples 
upon  the  finer  laws  of  creative  effort.  Like  an  improvi- 
satore,  he  gives  the  rein  to  his  fancy,  and  dashes  wildly 
onward  wherever  the  bewildering  trains  of  thick-coming 
associations  may  lead.  He  was  mastered  by  his  genius, 
rather  than  master  of  it,  as  Homer,  Dante,  Shakspeare, 
and  all  the  greater  poets  were  masters. 

Shelley's  fertility  of  imagination,  however,  was  no 
less  a  part  of  his  strength  than  it  was  of  his  weakness. 
As  Mr.  Macaulay,  in  his  beautiful  essay  on  John  Bun- 


134  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

yan,  finely  says  :  "Out  of  the  most  indefinite  terms  of 
a  hard,  dark,  cold,  metaphysical  system,  he  made  a 
gorgeous  Pantheon,  full  of  beautiful,  majestic,  and  life 
like  forms.  He  turned  atheism  itself  into  a  mythology, 
rich  with  visions  as  glorious  as  the  gods  that  live  in  the 
marble  of  Phidias,  or  the  virgin  saints  that  smile  on  us 
from  the  canvas  of  Murillo.  The  Spirit  of  Beauty, 
the  Principle  of  Good,  the  Principle  of  Evil,  when  he 
treated  of  them,  ceased  to  be  abstractions.  They  took 
shape  and  color.  They  were  no  longer  mere  words  ; 
but  'intelligible  forms,'  'fair  humanities/  objects  of 
love,  of  adoration,  or  of  fear.  Some  of  the  metaphysi 
cal  and  ethical  theories  of  Shelley  were  certainly  absurd 
and  pernicious.  But  we  doubt  whether  any  'modern 
poet  has  possessed  in  an  equal  degree  the  highest 
qualities  of  the  great  ancient  masters.  The  words  bard 
and  inspiration,  which  seem  so  cold  and  affected  when 
applied  to  other  modern  writers,  have  a  perfect  pro 
priety  when  applied  to  him.  He  was  not  an  author, 
but  a  bard.  His  poetry  seems  not  to  have  been  an  art, 
but  an  inspiration/' 

It  was  chiefly  in  the  glow  and  intensity  of  his  senti 
ments  that  the  vast  fusing  powers  of  his  imagination 
were  manifest.  His  heart,  burning  with  the  purest 
fires  of  love,  seemed  to  melt  all  nature  into  a  liquid 
mass  of  goodness.  Over  the  wildest  and  darkest  wastes 
of  human  experience  he  cast  the  refulgence  of  his  own 
benignant  nature,  as  the  many-colored  rainbow  glorifies 
the  dark  bosom  of  the  thunder-cloud.  Out  of  the 
rankest  poisons  he  extracted  the  most  refreshing  of 
sweets. 

"  Medea's  wondrous  alchemy, 

Which,  wherever  it  fell,  made  the  earth  gleam 
With  bright  flowers,  and  the  wintry  boughs  exhale 
From  vernal  blossoms  fresh  fragrance," 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  136 

was  his ;  and  from  the  exceeding  fulness  of  himself  he 
poured  out  into  the  mighty  heart  of  the  world  a  per 
petual  stream  of  life.  No  poet  that  has  come  after  him, 
and  few  that  were  gone  before  him,  had  equal  power  of 
stirring  within  the  soul  of  humanity  such  noble  aspira 
tions — such  fervent  love  of  freedom — such  high  re 
solves  in  the  cause  of  virtue  and  intelligence — and  such 
strong  prophetic  yearnings  for  the  Better  Future. 

In  the  earlier  part  of  his  career,  as  we  have  seen, 
he  had  been  touched  by  the  spirit  of  skepticism  and 
despair,  which  was  the  malady  of  those  times.  He  sent 
up  to  heaven,  from  a  heart  full  of  anguish,  a  keen  and 
infinite  wail — as  the  wail  of  a  vast  inarticulate  multitude 
without  God  and  without  Hope  in  the  world.  But 
through  the  rifted  clouds  of  the  night  he  saw,  more 
clearly  than  any  contemporary,  the  davvnings  of  the 
day.  With  jubilating  voice  he  prophesied  its  glories. 
While  the  capacious  genius  of  Scott  was  exhausting  its 
energies  in  rummaging  the  magazines  of  a  forgotten 
past,  to  amuse  the  fancy,  or  beguile  the  languor  of 
children,  both  great  and  small  ;  while  Byron,  like  a 
lubberly  boy,  was  whining  and  scolding  over  his  self- 
inflicted  and  petty  miseries — Shelley,  with  dauntless 
heart  and  kindling  eye,  wrestled  in  the  wild,  frightful 
conflict  of  incoherence  and  discord,  struggling  upward, 
till  he  stood  upon  the  mountain-tops  of  the  century  in 
which  he  lived,  watching  the  dying  agonies  of  the  de- 
crepid  Old  Order  and  hailing  the  swift  approaches  of 
the  New. 

As  a  man,  Shelley  seems  to  us  to  have  been  worthy 
of  both  admiration  and  love.  He  exhibited  a  rare 
combination  of  all  that  was  tender  with  all  that  was  no 
ble  and  daring.  Like  his  own  Alastor,  he  was  *'  brave, 
gentle,  and  generous."  The  delicacy  and  refinement 
we  are  accustomed  to  ascribe  to  the  female  nature  were 


136  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

united  in  him  to  the  impetuous  boldness  of  the  mascu 
line.  A  life  of  early  suffering, — of  intense  and  pro 
tracted  illness, — had  trained  his  spirit  to  those  passive 
virtues  of  endurance  and  gentleness  which  often  best 
illustrate  the  greatness  of  the  human  soul.  Except  in 
wisdom  and  knowledge,  he  never  ceased  to  be  a  child. 
He  carried  into  manhood  the  same  guileless  simplicity, 
the  same  ardent  enthusiasm,  the  playful  innocence,  the 
meekness,  the  modesty,  and  the  truth,  which  were  the 
characteristics  of  his  boyhood.  Time  did  not  blunt  the 
sharpness,  nor  the  delusions  of  the  world  corrupt  the 
purity,  of  his  keen  and  lively  sensibilities.  No  seduc 
tions  nor  wrongs  could  warp  his  judgment  from  the 
perfect  law  which  seems  to  have  been  impressed  upon 
his  inmost  nature.  He  was  ever  the  same  unspotted, 
mild,  genial,  sensitive,  yet  lion-hearted  being.  'All 
who  approached  him  loved  him,  and  all  whom  he  ap 
proached  he  loved. 

"  'Mid  the  passions  wild  of  human  kind, 
He  stood  like  a  spirit  calming  them." 

Not  only  did  he  bear  himself  manfully  amid  the  rude 
shocks  and  pitiless  struggles  in  which  he  was  destined 
to  walk,  but  his  heart  melted  with  pity  and  love  for  the 
world  that  hated  him,  and  his  purse  was  ever  the  open 
response  to  his  sympathy.  As  deep  as  were  his  personal 
griefs,  he  did  not  forget  the  deeper  grief  of  his  race. 
He  was  the  ready  friend  of  the  friendless,  the  instant 
helper  of  the  distressed,  the  companion,  no  less  than 
the  benefactor  of  the  poor.  In  the  halls  of  the  rich 
and  gay  he  singled  out  the  despised  and  deserted,  and 
wherever  he  went  he  identified  himself  with  the  multi 
tude.  ' 

This  singular  kindliness  appeared  in  the  minutest  as 
well  as  the  greatest  actions  of  his  life.  It  was  the  grace  of 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  137 

his  manner  no  less  than  the  virtue  of  his  heart.  Lord 
Byron  once  said  that  Shelley  was  the  completest  gentle 
man  he  ever  knew.  He  was  regardful  of  the  happi 
ness  of  others,  not  always  showing  it  in  the  vulgar  way, 
by  relieving  their  distresses,  but  by  consulting  all  their 
shades  of  feeling.  At  the  same  time  he  was  not  un 
mindful  of  the  larger  and  broader  manifestations  of 
good-will.  A  never-ceasing  course  of  active  effort 
showed  that  his  benevolence  was  not  a  sentiment  but  a 
principle.  It  was  both  good-wishing  and  good-doing. 
He  who  could  walk  the  wards  of  a  hospital,  filled  with 
dangerous  diseases,  that  he  might  qualify  himself  to 
minister  to  the  maladies  of  the  poor,  must  have  pos 
sessed,  not  the  sickly  sentimentalism  of  Rousseau,  but 
the  philanthropy  of  a  Howard.  He  who  could- give 
the  half  of  his  whole  income  to  a  single  work  of  charity 
(the  building  a  dyke  to  prevent  inundations  upon  the 
huts  of  a  poor  settlement),  must  have  possessed  a  genu 
ine  sympathy.  He  who,  when  his  funds  where  ex 
hausted,  could  pawn  his  books,  or  favorite  instruments 
of  science,  to  help  a  needy  scholar,  to  cover  a  naked 
child,  or  give  warmth  and  plenty  to  the  hearth  of  a 
destitute  widow,  and  be  more  careful  to  conceal  his 
deeds  from  the  world  than  others  are  to  publish  them, 
was  actuated  by  no  theatrical  love  of  display,  but  by  a 
sincere  and  heartfelt  fellow-feeling  with  his  race. 

It  was  a  consequence  of  this  exalted  benevolence 
and  conscientiousness  that  the  political  principles  of 
Shelley  were  intensely  democratic.  It  does  not  appear 
that  he  had  digested  those  principles  into  a  system,  or 
that  he  had  matured  his  notions  into  practical  measures, 
but  every  act  and  sentiment  of  his  life  shows  him 
friendly  to  every  reform  by  which  freedom  is  to  be 
extended  or  the  condition  of  the  multitude  of  men  im 
proved.  In  all  the  efforts  of  the  masses,  particularly  to 


138  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

shake  the  tyranny  of  the  aristocratic  classes,  he  felt  the 
strongest  sympathy.  When  the  oppressed  workingmen 
of  England  manifested  a  determination  to  throw  off  the 
despotism  of  their  laws,  he  was  their  fast  friend  ;  when 
the  Italian  republics  seemed  about  to  make  a  stand 
against  their  despoilers,  he  was  raised  to  a  pitch  of  en 
thusiasm  in  their  behalf ;  and  when  the  Greeks  ap 
pealed  to  his  mind  by  the  double  attraction  of  their 
glorious  literature  and  history,  and  their  equally  glori 
ous  resistance  to  the  murder-breathing  Moslem,  he 
shared  the  dreams  of  their  heroes,  and  made  their 
struggle  immortal  by  his  pen.  The  noblest  fires  of  his 
spirit  were  kindled  by  every  cry  of  the  oppressed  against 
the  oppressor. 

Nor  did  he  confine  his  love  of  freedom  to  its  external 
and  grosser  forms.  The  peculiar  splendor  of  his  career 
as  a  democrat  was,  that  he  fought  the  battles  of  intel 
lectual  freedom.  He  was  the  vigilant  enemy  of  spirit 
ual  slavery  and  degradation.  Others  were  content  to 
resist  the  encroachments  of  power,  only  when  it  invaded 
plain  and  palpable  rights — when  it  robbed  men  of 
property,  or  trampled  upon  their  persons.  But  Shelley 
pursued  it  with  hatred — in  its  most  secret  lurking 
places,  as  well  as  in  the  open  air,  in  the  recesses  of  the 
soul,  as  well  as  in  the  despotisms  of  the  State.  He 
dreaded  tyranny  of  any  kind  less  because  it  produced 
social  unhappiness  than  because  it  crushed  the  human 
mind.  It  was  there  that  he  hated  it  most,  and  it  was 
there  that  he  most  resolutely  resisted  its  approaches. 

Shelley  was,  furthermore,  a  democrat  because  of  his 
hopeful  nature.  It  was  the  habit  of  his  mind  to  look 
forward  to  the  future  with  bright  and  expanding  antici 
pations.  In  casting  his  eye  over  the  arrangements  of 
society,  he  saw  what  prodigious  advances  it  was  capable 
of  making  in  all  the  dispositions  of  trade  and  social 


Percy  By s she  SJielley.  139 

intercourse,  and  in  all  the  departments  of  knowledge, 
and  he  saw  no  reason  why  these  advancements  should 
not  be  made.  He  believed  that  they  would  be  made. 
He  believed  that  a  glorious  development  awaited  hu 
manity,  when  it  should  cast  off  its  ancient  supersti 
tions.  So,  in  every  attempt  of  the  people  to  break 
through  the  thick  night  of  ignorance  that  enveloped 
them,  in  every  throe  of  the  nations  to  snap  the  chains 
by  which  they  were  bound,  his  fancy  discerned  the  be 
ginnings  of  this  more  than  millennial  glory.  His  soul 
leaped  with  joy  at  the  faintest  flash  of  the  coming  light. 
An  iris  of  hope  was  ever  stretched  across  his  horizon. 

Yet  Shelley's,  it  must  be  confessed,  was  far  from  be 
ing  a  perfect  character.  His  judgment  was  always  too 
much  overborne  by  his  excitabilities.  His  mind 
wanted  that  repose  which  is  the  emblem,  of  the  highest 
power.  His  efforts  were  consequently  too  convulsive — 
more  like  the  throes  of  a  hampered  giant  than  the  calm 
and  sustained  efforts  of  a  Hercules.  It  is  evident  that  he 
never  had  settled,  to  the  satisfaction  of  his  mind,  the  theo 
ries  of  the  Universe,  Man  and  God,  which  perplex  and 
disturb  all  thoughtful  persons.  He  was  still  struggling 
doubtfully  when  he  died,  with  the  great  problem  of  ex 
istence.  He  questioned  earth  and  heaven,  to  relieve 
the  weary  doubts  of  his  soul,  but  they  made  him  no  re 
sponse.  At  length  he  appealed  to  the  soul  itself  for  a 
reply.  Then,  over  the  mists  of  the  dark  conflict,  rose 
the  rainbow  of  Hope  in  the  form  and  aspect  of  Love. 
This,  he  cried  in  the  agony  of  his  distress,  shall  be  my 
God  ;  Love  is  the  soul  of  the  universe  ;  Love  explains 
all  mysteries  ;  Love  comprehends  all  beauty  ;  Love  is 
the  splendor  of  truth  ;  Love  is  the  consummation  and 
flower  of  all  things.  Love  is  the  highest  power — Love 
is  God. 

Shelley  was  not  a  Christian  in  the  technical  sense,  but 


140  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

he  was  essentially  a  religious  man,  not  an  atheist,  but 
rather,  like  Spinoza,  ''intoxicated  with  God."  From 
the  gross  form  of  materialism  in  which  he — like  all 
other  students  of  the  English  universities  of  that  day — 
was  educated,  his  etherial  nature  had  led  him  into  the 
idealism  of  Berkeley.  His  latter  works  are  all,  more  or 
less,  tinged  by  the  subtle  and  delicate  colors  of  the  spir 
itual  theory.  It  penetrated  and  modified  all  his  con 
ceptions.  His  Supreme  Being  was  not,  like  the  ven 
erated  object  of  the  grosser  superstitions,  a  person  of 
human  foibles  and  passions — the  mean  and  miserable 
worshipper  projected  out  of  himself  and  magnified — • 
but  a  pure,  self-existent,  intellectual,  and  moral  Spirit,  a 
spirit  of  infinite  Truth  and  Love.  The  world  apparent 
to  our  senses,  was  but  an  inconsiderable  unit  in  the 
measureless  creation  of  which  this  Spirit  was  the  sub 
stance  and  centre.  All  human  spirits  were  but  separa 
ble  portions  of  a  stupendous  whole,  bound  to  each 
other  by  myriad  sympathies  and  infinite  desires,  and 
passing,  in  the  successive  stages  of  existence,  to  higher 
forms  of  thought,  and  keener  and  nobler  emotions. 
Death,  in  this  view,  was  not  destruction,  but  the  pas 
sage  or  rather  melting  away  into  a  better  Life.  The 
forms  and  organs  which  reveal  us  to  each  other,  he 
thought,  drop  away  at  death — our  bodies  fade  from 
our  vision — but  the  spirit  remains  in  a  congenial  world, 
intelligent,  impassive,  and  unshackled.  All  things  that 
it  loved  are  still  around  it,  but  it  is  no  more  the  victim 
of  space  and  time.  It  has  joined  the  company,  and 
lives  in  the  presence  of  the  Immortals,  dwelling  in  that 
spiritual  world  which  enwraps  the  more  material  and 
visible  sphere  of  our  present  being. 

But  there  was  a  cause  still  more  powerful,  though 
more  remote,  in  determining  the  mind  of  Shelley  to 
Infidelity,  as  it  is  called.  It  was  the  prevailing  Chris- 


Percy  By s she  Shelley.  141 

tian  philosophy  of  the  era.  The  disciples  of  Locke 
had  long  held  possession  of  the  schools.  Their 
dogmas  were  generally  received  for  the  truth.  Locke 
himself  was  a  Christian  in  theory  and  practice,  but  the 
intellectual  system  of  Locke  was  not  Christian.  His 
firm  faith  in  the  Scriptures,  his  experimental  knowledge 
of  their  truth,  prevented  him  from  carrying  his  doc 
trines  out  to  their  ultimate  conclusion.  He  lived,  there 
fore,  and  died  a  Christian.  But  not  so  many  of  his 
immediate  followers.  They  received  the  seed  he  had 
sown  in  no  Christian  hearts.  There  \vere  no  obstacles 
to  prevent  them  from  pushing,  indeed  it  was  inevitable 
that  they  should  push,  his  doctrines  to  their  more  ulti 
mate  principles.  Condillac,  in  France,  when  he  pro 
pounded  his  system  of  sensualism,  borrowed  it  directly 
from  Locke.  Hume,  of  England,  more  consecutive 
and  more  acute  than  the  rest  of  Locke's  disciples,  only 
developed,  although  it  may  have  been  unconsciously, 
the  principles  of  their  common  master.  The  long 
controversy,  which  took  place  in  England  in  the  time 
of  Shaftesbury,  respecting  the  truth  of  the  Christian 
Religion,  was  a  controversy  that  grew  out  of  the  system 
of  Locke.  The  champions  of  Christianity  fought  under 
a  disadvantage.  Their  philosophy  and  their  religion 
were  at  variance.  To  go  into  the  fight  against  infidelity, 
with  weapons  drawn  from  the  magazine  of  Locke's 
philosophy,  was  to  fight  with  a  broken  reed  and  a 
battered  sword.  The  infidels  had  the  best  of  the  battle, 
until  some  superior  minds,  perceiving  the  folly  of  their 
philosophy,  cut  loose  from  its  untenable  grounds,  fought 
for  Christianity  on  its  own  merits,  and  turned  the  tide 
of  victory.  It  is  the  misfortune  of  Locke's  system,  as 
Cousin  has  shown,  that  its  three  great  theories,  of  Free 
dom,  of  the  Soul,  and  of  God,  lead,  by  inevitable  conse 
quence,  to  Fatalism,  Materialism,  and  Atheism.  Now, 


142  Percy  By s she  Shelley. 

Shelley,  though  he  had  logical  power  enough  to  follow 
the  system  of  Locke  to  its  inferences,  like  the  other 
men  of  that  day,  did  not  have  sagacity  enough  to 
detect  the  falsehood  of  its  premises.  '  He  was  .only 
more  fearless  than  other  thinkers  in  giving  a  public 
expression  to  his  opinions.  Too  pure  in  heart  to  com 
promise  with  fraud  and  wrong  in  any  shape,  and  too 
noble  to  harbor  even  the  wish  to  conceal  his  senti 
ments,  he  at  once  proclaimed  his  opposition  to  Chris 
tianity. 

Yet,  be  it  borne  in  mind,  it  was  the  Christianity  of 
tradition  and  the  Old  Church  that  incurred  his  hatred. 
The  misfortune  of  our  beneficent  religion  is,  to  have  had 
its  glory  obscured  in  all  ages  by  the  absurd  and  repul 
sive  dogmas  of  its  teachers,  and  by  the  follies  and  vices 
of  its  friends.  At  no  single  period  of  its  existence,  since 
its  heaven-commissioned  founder  was  nailed  to  the  awful 
tree,  have  its  external  aspects  conformed  to  its  inward 
spirit ;  at  no  period  have  the  lives  of  its  votaries  corre 
sponded  to  the  high,  divine,  and  eternal  ideal  which  it 
was  intended  to  reveal.  Its  history  has  been  a  record 
of  selfish  pretentions,  absurd  creeds,  and  pernicious 
practices.  From  the  close  of  the  first  century  down  to 
the  present  time,  how  often  has  the  Church  been  the 
theatre  of  disgraceful  broils  and  wicked  persecutions  ! 
Under  the  dynasty  of  the  earlier  Romanists,  indeed,  the 
Church  became  the  nursing-mother  of  fraud  and  tyranny. 
She  crushed  the  human  soul, — she  aspired  to  make  good 
her  aspiration  to  universal  despotism  by  fagot  and 
flame.  And  when  her  high  claims,  in  this  respect,  were 
contested — when  the  giant-monk  of  Erhfurt  brought  in 
the  solemn  protest  of  the  enslaved  soul,  the  new  sects 
that  sprung  up  upon  her  ruins  were  filled  with  much 
of  her  intolerant  and  persecuting  spirit. 


Percy  ByssJic   Shelley.  143 

It  is  true,  there  was  much  at  all  times  to  redeem  the 
character  of  Christianity,  in  spite  of  its  abuses  and  cor 
ruptions.  But  this,  unfortunately,  consisted  in  those 
virtuous  influences  which  escape  the  eye  of  the  world, 
which  do  not  force  themselves  upon  the  public  obser 
vation,  and  whose  presence,  indeed,  is  never  recognized 
until  after  they  have  wrought  their  effects.  While  Christi 
anity,  in  its  external  aspects,  presented  features  of  dread 
and  repugnance,  it  was  silently  regenerating  the  world. 
Even  when  its  professed  teachers  and  friends  were  most 
unfaithful  to  it,  it  was  the  great  centre  of  moral  and 
civil  elevation.  It  was  working,  with  the  might  of  God, 
in  secret  places  and  among  obscure  men,  the  overthrow 
of  oppression.  But  the  Free  Thinkers  were  blind  to 
this  aspect  of  its  history.  It  was  their  misfortune  to  have 
identified  religion  with  the  external  Church.  Their 
sensibilities  were  arrested  by  the  mockeries  and  wicked 
ness  of  the  latter,  without  being  touched  by  the  pure  and 
beautiful  benignity  of  the  former.  Most  gross  and  fatal 
mistake  ! 

But  we  must  tear  ourselves  from  the  subject :  our 
space,  already  exhausted,  warns  us  that  we  can  make 
only  the  briefest  allusion  to  the  circumstances  of  Shelley's 
death.  He  perished  during  a  storm  on  the  Gulf  of 
Lerici,  in  the  29th  year  of  his  age.  It  was  a  death  in 
singular  correspondence  with  his  life  ;  and  in  the  clos 
ing  stanza  of  his  Adonais,  suggested  by  the  untimely 
death  of  Keats,  a  friend  and  brother-spirit,  he  seems  to 
have  had  prophetic  glimpses  of  his  fate.  He  says  : 

« my  spirit's  bark  is  driven 


Far  from  the  shore,  far  from  the  trembling  throng, 
Whose  sails  were  never  to  the  tempest  given  ; 
The  massy  earth  and  sphered  skies  are  riven  ! 


H4  Percy  Bysshc  Shelley. 

I  am  borne  darkly,  fearfully  afar ; 

Whilst  burning  through  the  inmost  veil  of  Heaven, 

The  soul  of  Adonais,  like  a  star, 

Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  Eternal  are." 

His  remains  rest  beneath  the  mouldering  walls  of 
Rome— the  sepulchre  of  his  ashes  and  the  shrine  of 
our  sincerest  sympathy. 


THE  LAST  HALF-CENTURY.* 


|HE  half-century  which  has  just  closed  has  been 
one  of  prodigious  movement  and  significance. 
Seldom,  if  ever,  has  the  world  seen  a  fifty 
years  of  equal  moment.  Every  day  of  it  almost  has 
teemed  with  great  events — with  events  not  of  transient 
or  local,  but  of  deep  and  world-wide  interest.  Those 
years  have  been  fertile  also  in  great  men,  and  not  in  any 
single  walk  of  human  exertion,  but  in  all  departments, 
— in  literature,  philosophy,  war,  statesmanship,  and 
practical  enterprise. 

Doubtless,  in  the  eyes  of  Providence,  to  which  a 
thousand  years  are  as  one  day,  all  periods  of  human 
history  are  alike, — of  equal  weight  or  equal  nothing 
ness.  But  to  Man,  who  is  controlled  by  the  events  in 
which  he  lives,  all  periods  of  history  are  not  alike. 
Each  age  has  its  distinct  character,  is  adverse  or  propi 
tious  to  him,  pushes  on  or  retards  his  civilization,  his 
refinement,  his  progress  in  knowledge  and  art,  and  his 
practical  conquests  in  the  realms  of  space  and  time. 
For  this  reason  history  is  divided  into  epochs  or  eras, 
of  which  we  speak  as  good  or  bad,  as  ages  of  light  or 
of  darkness, — as  ages  when  our  race  seems  to  have  been 
kept  back  in  its  course  or  impelled  onward  and  upward. 

The  last  half-century,   therefore,   we  call  an  age  of 


*  From  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  Jan.  ist,  1851. 
7 


146  The  Last  Half -Century. 

great  moment  and  significance — because  it  has  been  a 
time  of  grand  events — a  destructive,  and  yet  a  prolific 
period— in  which  so  many  things  have  gone  out  and 
so  many  other  things  come  in,  so  many  horrible  errors 
and  prejudices  been  killed,  and  so  many  new  and 
beautiful  truths  bom — that  mankind,  we  believe,  to  the 
end  of  their  days,  will  rejoice  in  this  period.  They 
will  turn  to  it  in  after  ages,  as  we  now  turn  to  the  age 
of  the  Greek  dramatists,  to  the  Apostolic  age,  to  the 
age  of  Shakspeare,  to  the  Reformation,  to  the  scien 
tific  years  of  the  sixteenth  century,  etc.,  as  to  a  great 
fructifying  season  of  the  race — when  humanity  was  more 
than  ordinarily  genial,  and  shot  up  into  new  growths  and 
blossomed  into  a  more  luxuriant  bloom.  Its  mighty 
political  changes,  its  varied  and  novel  discoveries  in 
science,  its  stupendous  applications  of  art,  the  richness 
and  universality  of  its  literature,  the  spread  and  ramifi 
cations  of  its  trade,  and  the  lofty  moral  enterprises  it 
has  begun,  are  the  characteristics  of  its  eminence — the 
tokens  and  titles  of  its  glory. 

I.    POLITICAL    CHANGES. 

The  year  1800  opened  with  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  first 
Consul  of  France.  Beginning  his  career  as  a  subaltern 
officer  in  the  armies  of  the  republic,  that  extraordinary 
man  had  risen,  by  one  brilliant  achievement  after  an 
other,  to  the  highest  posts  of  command.  He  had  given 
a  finishing  stroke  to  the  tumults  of  the  old  revolution  ; 
he  had  conducted  a  campaign  against  the  Austrians  in 
Italy,  in  which  he  imparted  new  terrors  and  new  glories 
to  war,  and  by  triumphant  victories  at  Montenotte,  Mil- 
lissimo,  Castiglione,  Dego,  Arcola,  and  Rivoli,  by  the 
unprecedented  passage  of  the  bridge  of  Lodi,  and  by 
the  masterly  siege  of  Mantua,  established  his  position 


The  Last  Half-  Century.  147 

as  the  greatest  military  genius  of  all  time.  Elevated  by 
intrigue  and  stratagem  to  consular  power,  with  col 
leagues  that  were  merely  his  tools,  and  an  authority  that 
was  almost  despotic,  he  professed  at  first  to  exercise  his 
functions  with  moderation  and  justice.  He  made  over 
tures  of  peace  to  England,  with  which  France  had  been 
so  long  at  war  ;  but  the  ministry  of  Pitt,  distrustful  of 
his  sincerity,  and  elated  by  the  recent  triumphs  of  Nel 
son,  on  the  Nile,  repelled  his  advances,  and  prepared 
for  a  general  European  conflict. 

Then  followed  those  movements  of  armies  more 
tremendous  than  Europe  had  before  known,  in  which  the 
forces  of  Russia,  Prussia,  Austria,  and  England,  com 
bined  for  the  overthrow  of  a  single  man,  were  succes 
sively  repulsed.  Millions  of  men  were  precipitated 
upon  the  field  of  battle,  and  a  series  of  brilliant  exploits, 
at  Marengo,  at  Austerlitz,  at  Wagram,  at  Jena,  at  Eylau, 
gave  the  military  chieftain  almost  universal  dominion. 
He  reconstructed  society  abroad,  and  remodelled  the 
laws  at  home  ;  he  subdued  dynasties  that  had  been 
founded  for  centuries ;  he  dethroned  monarchs  by 
edict ;  he  seated  his  brothers  upon  the  most  ancient 
thrones,  and  caused  the  whole  world  to  tremble  at  his 
nod. 

But  with  his  unexampled  successes  came  also  unpre 
cedented  disaster.  The  foolish  expedition  into  Egypt, 
the  offensive  war  on  the  peninsula,  where  Wellington 
worsted  his  best  Marshals,  the  gigantic  but  insane  inva 
sion  of  Russia,  which  ended  in  the  conflagration  of 
Moscow,  the  awful  retreat  from  the  burning  city,  where 
every  step  was  marked  by  the  bones  of  thousands  who 
perished  of  cold  and  famine,  the  final  overthrow  at 
Waterloo,  and  the  lonely  imprisonment  at  St.  Helena, 
were  the  leading  incidents  in  a  drama  of  stupendous 
grandeur  and  catastrophe. 


148  The  Last  Half -Century. 

The  effect  of  these  immense  adventures,  of  these  sig 
nal  triumphs  and  woeful  calamities,  was  to  derange  the 
despotic  system  that  had  prevailed,  to  break  down  the 
prestige  of  kings,  to  emancipate  the  smaller  States  from 
the  oppressive  weight  of  the  larger,  to  accustom  the 
people  to  the  exercise  of  their  forces,  and  to  establish 
new  relations  among  the  powers  of  Christendom. 
Europe  was  prepared  for  new  organizations  ;  the  lead 
ing  sovereigns,  no  longer  able  to  manage  the  affairs  of 
their  respective  kingdoms,  entered  into  a  Holy  Alli 
ance  for  mutual  protection  and  general  tranquillity. 
They  parcelled  out  countries,  they  partitioned  nations, 
they  divided  races,  with  as  much  arbitrary  exercise  of 
command  as  was  ever  shown  in  the  regulations  of  a 
camp,  and  in  complete  disregard  of  tradition,  nation 
ality,  and  popular  feeling.  The  consequence  was,  a 
perpetual  uneasiness  on  the  part  of  the  people,  and  a 
perpetual  struggle  on  the  part  of  power,  to  retain 
its  position  and  to  enforce  its  rule.  The  thirty  years  that 
followed  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  though  nominally 
years  of  peace,  have  been  at  no  time  exempt  from  war. 
The  disorders  in  Spain,  the  insurrections  of  Piedmont 
and  Naples,  the  revolt  of  Belgium,  the  dethronement 
of  Charles  X.  in  France,  with  the  revolutionary  agita 
tions  that  grew  out  of  it,  and  finally,  in  1848,  the  over 
throw  of  French  monarchy,  the  establishment  of  a  re 
public,  and  the  general  uprising  of  the  whole  continent, 
when  kings  fled  and  the  Pope  abdicated,  and  the  entire 
aristocratic  system  began  to  totter  and  reel  like  a  vessel 
struck  by  opposing  winds,  were  the  direct  outgrowths 
of  the  false  and  tyrannic  constitution  adopted  in  the 
treaties  of  1815. 

In  the  midst  of  these  grander  perturbations  two  new 
powers,  that  had  before  exercised  but  little  influence  on 
the  politics  of  Christendom,  were  silently  rising — Russia 


The  Last  Half -Century.  149 

and  the  United  States.  The  former,  at  the  opening  of 
the  present  century,  was  only  regarded  as  an  immense 
unknown  tract  of  country,  inhabited  chiefly  by  boors 
and  savages.  It  is  true,  that  the  fame  of  Peter  the 
Great  and  of  Catherine  had  spread  through 'Europe  ; 
that  the  vigorous  wars  kept  up  for  years  along  the 
shores  of  the  Baltic,  in  which  Sweden  was  conquered, 
and  an  obstinate  series  of  skirmishes  with  the  Otto 
mans  and  Turks,  had  demonstrated  great  military  re 
sources  ;  but,  until  the  attempt  to  subjugate  Poland,  and 
the  war  against  Napoleon,  Russia  was  estimated  rather 
as  an  Asiatic  than  a  European  power.  Now,  she  is 
the  predominant  influence  among  the  absolute  govern 
ments.  Her  territory,  embracing  one-seventh  of  the 
globe,  is  possessed  by  fifty-four  millions  of  people,  with 
inexhaustible  resources  of  wealth,  a  disciplined  army  of 
one  million  soldiers,  extensive  manufactures  and  com 
merce,  a  rapidly  increasing  civilization,  and  the  most 
ambitious  hopes. 

The  other  nascent  power  to  which  we  refer,  also  just 
beginning  to  be  known  in  1800 — the  United  States — is 
now  second  to  none.  The  five  millions  of  people  of 
that  time  have  grown  to  twenty-five  millions  ;  the  fif 
teen  States  of  the  Union  are  now  thirty-one  ;  a  superfi 
cial  area  of  territory,  then  measuring  one  million  of 
square  miles,  is  now  nearly  four  millions  ;  and  a  com 
merce  which  was  then  small,  precarious,  and  timid,  now 
reaches  every  sea  and  every  extreme  river  and  lake  of 
the  globe.  We  had  then  no  possessions  on  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  and  none  beyond  the  Mississippi,  but  our  land 
marks  now  are  the  two  oceans.  The  developments  of 
agricultural  industry  have  been  enormous ;  a  single  seed 
alone,  that  of  cotton,  has  come  to  control  the  trade  of 
the  world  ;  three  successful  wars  and  a  skilful  diplomacy 
have  given  us  fame  abroad  ;  those  great  political  ques- 


i5o  The  Last  Half -Century. 

tions  which  have  deluged  the  old  world  for  centuries  in 
blood,  are  here  practically  determined  ;  an  experiment 
of  the  most  unlimited  popular  freedom  is  triumphantly 
sustained  ;  while  the  progress  of  intelligence,  industry, 
peace,  and  general  good-will  sets  at  naught  all  the  pre 
vious  experiences  of  the  race. 

Coeval  with  the  immense  changes  in  the  political 
state  of  Europe,  and  with  the  rise  of  Russia  and  the 
United  States,  there  have  been  great  results  effected  else 
where.  The  South  American  republics,  though  still 
unsettled,  have  by  successive  throes  cast  off  colonial 
bondage,  and  redeemed  U  continent  from  foreign  do 
minion.  Modern  civilization  has  penetrated  into  Egypt, 
Algiers,  and  other  parts  of  Africa ;  Persia  feels  the  pres 
sure  of  Christian  intelligence  and  liberal  art ;  and  while 
England,  through  the  ramifications  of  her  trade,  has 
built  up  an  empire  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of 
souls  in  the  East,  who  are  subjected  to  her  laws  and  her 
civilization,  she  has  discovered  and  peopled  a  fifth  di 
vision  of  the  globe,  in  Australia.  Battering  down  the 
barbarian  walls  of  China,  she  has  carried  trade,  refine 
ment,  -law.  and  religion  to  more  than  one-half  the  race. 
The  wild  tribes  of  the  desert,  the  furious  savages  of  the 
south  seas,  the  wandering  herdsmen  and  hunters  of 
India,  as  well  as  the  stolid  denizens  of  the  Flowery 
Land,  have  been  breathed  upon  by  the  influences  of  a 
higher  life ;  they  are  arrested  and  brought  face  to  face 
with  a  nobler  social  order ;  vanquished  by  its  strength 
or  reduced  by  its  skill,  they  are  made  to  feel  its  superi 
ority ;  and  thus,  in  various  ways,  •  ignorance,  brutality, 
prejudice,  horrid  faiths,  and  oppressive  castes  are  giving 
way  before  the  gradual  advances  of  knowledge,  art,  and 
social  discipline. 


The  Last  Half -Century.  i5i 

II.     LEGISLATIVE    REFORMS. 

The  spirit  of  progress  manifested  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  in  violent  overturnings  and  changes,  has  shown 
itself  among  the  freer  people  of  England,  in  a  grand  re 
form  of  laws  and  institutions.  This  movement  was  be 
gun  at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  in  those  trials  for 
constructive  treason,  in  which  Tooke,  Thelwall,  Hardy, 
and  others  figured,  when  the  eloquence  of  Erskine  ex 
ploded  the  absurd  maxims  of  constructive  guilt,  and 
established  the  right  of  Britons  to  free  speech,  against 
the  combined  influence  of  king,  ministry,  and  judges. 
The  discussions  that  grew  out  of  those  trials  gave  a  new 
meaning  to  the  law  of  libel  and  sedition,  to  the  rights 
of  juries,  and  to  the  liberties  of  the  subject.  The  total 
abolition  of  the  slave-trade,  not  long  after,  was  another 
great  gain  to  the  cause  of  humanity.  It  brought  into 
the  ascendant,  in  the  first  nation  of  the  earth,  such  men 
as  Sharpe,  Clarkson,  Wilberforce,  Fox,  Stephen,  Ma 
cau  lay  (father  of  the  essayist),  and  Brougham,  whose 
humaner  sentiments  and  progressive  tendencies  have  been 
infused  into  general  opinion.  Their  efforts  again  pre 
pared  the  way  for  those  legal  reforms  in  which  Ben- 
tham,  Romilly,  Macintosh,  and  Brougham  won  an 
undying  renown.  The  common  laws  of  England,  but 
especially  the  penal  codes,  with  all  their  good  features, 
were  yet  atrociously  severe,  bloody,  and  unjust.  Hun 
dreds  of  the  most  trivial  minor  offences  could  be  pun 
ished  with  death  ;  stealing  a  fish,  marrying  a  couple  out 
of  church,  maiming  cattle,  transporting  wool,  pulling 
down  turnpike-gates,  etc.,  were  placed  in  the  same  cat 
egory  with  murder,  arson,  and  rape  ;  counsel  were  not 
allowed  to  prisoners,  even  in  cases  of  high  treason  ; 
while  the  penalties  prescribed  were  barbarous,  and  the 
poor  wretch  condemned  in  any  capital  case,  might  be 


1 52  The  Last  Half  Century. 

dragged  to  the  place  of  execution  at  the  heels  of  horses, 
might  be  quartered,  might  be  embowelled,  might  be  slit 
in  the  nose,  or  have  his  skeleton  left  hanging  on  the 
gallows  to  rot.  But,  thanks  to  the  wonderful  sagacity 
and  courage  of  Bentham,  to  the  indefatigable  parlia 
mentary  labors  of  Romilly,  to  the  stately  eloquence  of 
Macintosh,  and  the  sledge-hammer  logic  of  Henry 
(not  then  Lord)  Brougham,  the  crueller  features  of  these 
provisions  were  mitigated  or  removed.  At  the  same 
time,  the  fearful  abuses  of  Chancery  were  purged,  the 
perfidies  of  the  courts  exposed,  useless  forms  retrenched, 
old  and  oppressive  processes  superseded,  the  statutes 
consolidated,  and  a  considerable  number  of  titles  codi 
fied.  It  was  in  reference  to  these  ameliorations  that 
Brougham  said,  citing  the  boast  of  Augustus,  that  he 
found  Rome  brick  and  left  it  marble, — "  How  much 
nobler  the  sovereign's  boast,  when  he  shall  have  it  to 
say,  that  he  found  Law  dear  and  left  it  cheap,  found  it 
a  sealed  book  and  left  it  a  living  letter,  found  it  the  pat 
rimony  of  the  rich,  left  it  the  inheritance  of  the  poor, 
found  it  the  two-edged  sword  of  craft  and  oppression,  and 
left  it  the  staff  of  honesty  and  the  shield  of  innocence  !" 
The  struggle  between  Right  and  Prescription,  thus 
begun  in  the  sphere  of  criminal  law,  was  extended  even 
within  the  domain  of  religious  prerogative.  The  bish 
op's  mitre,  like  the  monarch's  crown — the  gown  of  the 
churchman,  as  well  as  that  of  the  lawyer  and  judge — 
were  subjected  to  the  same  rigid  scrutinies  of  reason 
and  justice.  Those  venerable  strongholds  of  bigotry, 
the  Corporation  and  Test  Acts,  were  the  first  of  the 
"bulwarks  erected  to  secure  the  Established  Church," 
as  Blackstone  described  them,  which  fell  before  the 
modern  assault.  That  no  person  could  be  legally 
elected  to  certain  offices  without  having  previously  taken 
the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  in  the  forms  of  the 


The  Last  Half -Century.  163 

Establishment,  or  that  all  military  and  civil  function 
aries  should  have  declared  against  the  doctrine  of 
transubstantiation,  were  adjudged  to  be  political  tests  so 
unreasonable,  so  intolerant,  and  in  their  practical  working 
so  pernicious — levelled,  as  they  were,  equally  at  Prot 
estant  dissenters  and  Catholic  recusants — that,  after  a 
series  of  stormy  and  protracted  debates,  they  were  blot 
ted  forever  from  the  records. 


III.     LITERARY    ASPECTS. 

How  many  and  what  brilliant  names  pass  before  us 
when  we  recall  the  literary  history  of  the  period  of 
time  under  review?  As  we  hurriedly  travel  down  the 
vista,  it  seems  as  if  our  eyes  swept  the  heavens  when 
the  night  is  glorious  with  stars.  Each  object  is  in  it 
self  a  world,  radiating  from  its  single  centre  beams  of 
many-colored  light,  while  the  whole,  gathered  into 
constellations,  or  poured  along  the  skies  in  galaxies, 
floods  the  air  with  its  illumination.  Scott,  and 
Wordsworth,  and  Byron,  and  Shelley,  and  Keats,  and 
Southey,  and  Coleridge — and  what  multitudes  of  others, 
of  scarcely  inferior  genius  :  Goethe,  the  Schlegels, 
Tieck,  Heine,  Hoffman,  Freiligrath,  Tegner,  Chateau 
briand,  De  Stael,  De  Genlis,  Hugo,  Lamartine,  Sand, 
Guizot,  Thierry,  Michelet,  Sismondi,  Manzoni,  Car- 
lyle,  Macaulay,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Hood,  Emerson, 
Irving,  Bryant,  Hawthorne,  and  a  host  of  lesser  lights, 
many  of  them  gone  out,  but  the  most  of  them  still 
active  in  their  various  spheres  of  influence  !  Who  shall 
compute  their  numbers ;  who  estimate  the  amount 
and  variety  of  the  intellectual  wealth  they  have  con 
tributed  to  the  common  treasury  of  the  world  ;  or  who 
describe  the  extent  and  intensity  of  the  delight  they  have 
spread  ? 


1 54  The  Last  Half -Century. 

Modern  literature,  while  it  has  degenerated  in  but  a 
single  branch,  falling  short  in  its  dramatic  efforts,  of  the 
splendid  execution  of  the  Greek  dramatists  and  of  the 
noble  vigor  and  pathos  of  the  age  of  Shakspeare,  has 
yet  made  the  most  rapid  advances  in  almost  every 
other.  In  the  art  of  writing  history,  Niebuhr,  Guizot, 
Arnold,  and  Macaulay  have  little  to  learn  from  Herod 
otus,  Thucydides,  and  Tacitus.  Esthetics,  or  artistic 
criticism,  has  reached  a  depth  of  insight,  and  a  breadth 
of  critical  principle  which  show  an  immeasurable  supe 
riority  ;  while  the  century  may  be  said  to  have  origi 
nated  the  style  of  periodical  writing,  and  the  infinite 
fecundity  of  prose  fiction.  It  is  true,  there  had  been 
Guardians,  Spectators,  Gentlemen's  Magazines,  and 
Critical  Reviews,  before  the  establishment  of  the  Edin 
burgh  Review  (1802),  but  they  were  mere  penny  whis 
tles  of  thought  and  criticism  compared  with  the  trumpet 
blasts  of  our  recent  quarterlies.  It  is  true,  also,  that 
Cervantes,  Rabelais,  Le  Sage,  Boccaccio,  Bunyan,  De 
foe,  Swift,  and  Fielding  had  written  stories  before  the 
mighty  Wizard  of  the  North  began  to  pour  out  of  his  in 
exhaustible  fount,  that  series  of  tales  in  which  he  almost 
rivals  Shakspeare  in  the  creation  of  character,  and  sur 
passes  Lope  De  Vega  in  fertility  of  invention.  But  the 
peculiar  distinction  of  our  time  is,  that  while  those  im 
mortal  narrators  illustrated  at  distant  intervals,  and  each 
by  himself,  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  the  fruitful  effort 
of  Scott  was  but  the  beginning  of  an  activity  that  has 
gone  on  widening  and  extending  its  influences,  until 
novels  have  become  an  article  of  daily  production  and 
daily  luxury.  Every  well-educated  man  or  woman 
is  a  reader  of  them  ;  and  almost  every  well-educated 
man  or  woman  a  writer.  Expatiating  over  every  sub 
ject — illuminating  history,  science,  government,  and 
religion,  as  well  as  the  manners  and  customs  of  all 


The  Last  Half -Century.  i55 

classes  of  the  people — invading  all  realms  of  earth  and 
air,  and,  at  times,  even  the  bottomless  abysses,  they 
have  opened  new  worlds  of  thought  and  sentiment,  and 
purveyed  to  millions  of  minds  an  infinite  diversity  of 
nourishment  and  pleasure. 

But,  in  addition  to  this  rapid  and  multifarious  devel 
opment  of  certain  kinds  of  writings,  our  age  has  wit 
nessed  the  creation  of  an  almost  entire  national,  litera 
ture.  Germany,  which  in  literary  productiveness  and 
vigor  is  now  the  foremost  nation,  was  scarcely  known 
to  the  rest  of  Europe  at  the  beginning  of  this  century. 
Saving  Luther,  and  a  few  other  reformers,  her  writers 
were  mostly  of  a  jejune  and  imitative  class,  who  withered 
under  an  emasculate  dependence  on  Roman  and  French 
models.  But  with  the  advent  of  Wieland,  Lessing, 
Herder,  and  especially  of  Goethe  and  Schiller — nearly 
all  of  whose  efforts  date  since  the  French  revolution — 
her  literature  has  expanded  until  it  has  finally  become 
the  most  fruitful  source  of  modern  culture.  In  any  one 
year  now,  it  produces  more  sound  learning,  more  use 
ful  science,  more  genuine  criticism,  and  more  beautiful 
fiction  than  it  was  usual  to  produce  in  whole  centuries 
before. 

Another  striking  peculiarity  in  the  literary  history  of 
the  time  is,  that  literary  men  of  different  nations  are 
becoming  more  and  more  acquainted  with  all  that  is 
grand  or  beautiful  in  their  respective  productions.  The 
barriers  of  ignorance  which  formerly  separated  them 
are  thrown  down,  and  they  begin  to  regard  themselves, 
for  the  first  time,  as  a  real  Republic  of  Letters,  conse 
crated  to  the  loftiest  purposes,  and  laying  up  for  all 
mankind  an  indestructible  inheritance  of  Beauty  and 
Truth.  No  Pere  Bowhours,  as  Carlyle  says,  now  in 
quires  whether  a  German  can  possibly  "possess  a  soul ;" 
no  Voltaire  ridicules  Shakspeare  as  a  huge  Gilles  de 


1 56  The  Last  Half-  Century. 

Foires,  or  drunken  savage  ;  no  English  critic  describes 
Goethe  or  Schiller  as  mere  master-workers  in  a  great 
stagnant  pool  of  indecency  and  dulness.  The  once  ex 
clusive  treasures  of  the  nations  are  thrown  open  to  com 
mon  possession,  and  the  mind  of  each  people,  confessing 
the  characteristic  worth  of  all  the  others,  finds  everywhere 
traits  of  excellence  and  nobleness.  It  finds  that  we  all 
live  by  one  human  heart,  and  are  advancing  in  differ 
ent  ways  to  the  same  great  goal  of  human  elevation. 

Yet  the  tendencies  of  modern  literature  are  shown 
quite  as  strongly  by  another  fact,  which  is,  that  it 
aims  to  become  universal,  both  in  the  subjects  it  han 
dles  and  in  the  persons  to  whom  it  is  addressed. 
It  seeks  for  its  materials,  as  its  recipients,  on  every 
side ;  no  longer  confined  to  a  narrow  list  of  time- 
consecrated  themes,  it  expands  itself  to  broader  and 
more  general  interests.  It  has  learned  the  inestimable 
secret,  that  no  object  in  the  universe  is  unworthy  of  note, 
that  nothing  which  concerns  the  human  heart  is  either 
low  or  trivial  or  commonplace.  It  sees  that  every  sprig 
which  falls  to  the  ground  is  connected  with  that  won 
derful  Tree  of  Life,  whose  roots,  ramifying  through  the 
earth,  make  the  solid  foundation  of  the  globe,  while 
its  branches,  growing  year  by  year,  reach  up  to  the  top 
most  Heaven.  It  sees  that  every  emotion  in  the  mean 
est  human  soul  is  the  emotion  of  an  infinite  spirit,  sus 
ceptible  of  an  infinite  happiness  or  infinite  fall.  It  rev 
erences  the  whole  of  Nature  ;  but,  above  all,  it  sympa 
thizes  with  the  whole  of  Man.  It  strives  to  reveal  the 
beauty  and  the  grandeur  there  is  in  all  existence  ;  and 
to  show,  how  rich  in  delight  and  nobleness  are  the  lowly 
and  the  habitual,  even  more  than  the  lofty  and  distant. 
Behind  the  realities  of  daily  routine  and  toil,  we  are 
made  to  see  an  exhaustless  ideal  world,  glorious  in  en 
chantments  and  fertile  with  every  joy.  Our  homes  and 


The  Last  Half  -  Century .  i5f 

poorest  social  duties  are  filled  with  dignity,  and  our 
mother  earth,  trodden  and  trailed  in  the  dust  as  she  has 
been,  raised  to  her  proper  place  among  the  planets  of 
the  skies. 

Consider,  again,  the  unexampled  rapidity  with  which 
literature  has  been  diffused  !  Consider  that  the  nine 
teenth  century  has  been  the  teeming  age  of  the  printing- 
press — the  age  of  cheap  books  and  cheaper  newspapers 
— the  age  when  infant,  and  Sunday,  and  ragged,  and 
free,  and  classical  schools,  have  taught  multitudes  of 
all  classes  to  read.  In  Germany  alone  any  year's  book 
fair  would  exhibit  more  new  publications  than  was  con 
tained  in  many  an  ancient  world-famous  library.  One 
leading  publisher  now  will  often  have  upon  his  shelves 
a  larger  variety  of  books  than  would  have  supplied  the 
reading  of  the  world  a  century  ago.  Every  day  the 
groaning  press  pours  out  its  thousands  of  volumes. 
Not  light,  trashy,  or  worthless  works  ;  on  the  contrary, 
the  best  specimens  of  the  best  literatures  of  all  ages. 
The  choicest  treasures  of  ancient  art — the  ample  tomes 
of  the  learned  eras — the  sacred  classics  of  England's 
ripest  period — books  of  science,  of  research,  of  antiqui 
ties,  of  criticism,  of  philosophical  inquiry  and  theologi 
cal  disquisition — mingled  with  an  overwhelming  profu 
sion  of  travels,  biographies,  essays,  poems,  novels,  pam 
phlets,  and  tracts — are  issued  and  reissued  till  one  won 
ders  how  the  world  contains  them  all.  What  books 
fail  to  hold,  overflows  into  the  periodical  and  the  news 
paper.  A  single  print  now  will  circulate  among  its  fifty 
thousand  subscribers,  and  be  read  daily  by  twice  that 
number  of  persons  ;  yet  there  are  hundreds  of  these 
penny  prints.  A  single  religious  society  will  send  the 
words  of  Paul  or  John  to  a  greater  number  of  minds 
in  seven  days  than  Paul  or  John  could  have  preached 
to  had  they  preached  incessantly  for  seven  times  seven 


1 58  Ihe  Last  Half -Century. 

years.  All  the  pulpits  in  the  city  do  not  address,  once 
a  week,  a  congregation  as  large  as  that  daily  addressed 
by  half  a  dozen  editors.  So  swift  and  prolific,  in  short, 
are  the  multiplying  energies  of  the  press,  that  it  alone 
would  have  placed  the  people  of  the  Nineteenth  Century 
in  possession  of  a  power  more  tremendous  than  was 
ever  before  wielded  by  our  race. 

IV.     SCIENTIFIC    DISCOVERIES. 

It  is  in  the  sphere  of  physical  science  that  this  activity 
of  the  modern  mind  has  been  most  conspicuously  dis 
played.  The  achievements  here  have  been  signal  and 
resplendent  indeed,  surpassing  those  of  all  previous 
time,  and  conducting  our  race  to  the  verge  of  discover 
ies  still  more  comprehensive  and  wonderful.  We  are 
already  so  accustomed  to  acknowledge  the  truth  of  its 
vast  deductions — we  have  come  to  receive  their  general 
principles  as  so  unquestionable,  that  it  seems  to  most  of 
us  they  must  have  been  always  known.  We  can  hardly 
believe  that  it  is  within  the  memory  of  men  still  young 
that  the  most  important  doctrines  of  Astronomy,  of 
Geology,  of  Optics,  of  Mineralogy,  of  Chemistry,  of 
Zoology,  of  Comparative  and  Fossil  Anatomy,  of  Pa 
leontology,  of  Magnetism,  of  Electricity,  of  Galvanism, 
of  Actinism,  etc.,  have  been  first  published.  That  the 
world  should  have  been  ignorant  of  so  much,  and  got 
along  with  its  ignorance,  is  surprising  ;  and  it  is  still 
more  surprising  that  such  an  accumulation  of  facts  as 
now  compose  the  body  of  the  sciences,  should  have  been 
gathered  within  so  short  a  period  of  time.  But  so  it  is. 
Nearly  all  that  we  know  of  the  natural  sciences,  as  con 
tradistinguished  from  the  mathematical  and  moral 
sciences,  has  come  to  us  from  the  explorations,  experi 
ments,  and  reasonings  of  the  last  fifty  years.  Some  of 


The  Last  Half -Century. 

them  have  originated  entirely  within  that  time ;  others 
have  been  so  extensively  developed,  as  to  be  regarded  as 
almost  new  ;  while  others,  in  which  the  direct  progress 
has  been  less,  have  reached  a  precision  and  exactitude 
in  their  details,  that  have  placed  them,  for  the  first  time, 
on  a  fixed  and  certain  basis. 

The  leading  principles  of  astronomy,  for  instance, 
were  ascertained  by  Copernicus,  Kepler,  Newton,  Huy- 
gens,  and  others,  centuries  since  ;  immense  tables  of 
observation  had  been  constructed  by  the  old  astrono 
mers,  the  size  and  distance  of  several  planets  measured, 
a  consistent  theory  of  the  stellar  universe  attained,  and 
knowledge  of  the  heavens  almost  indefinitely  enlarged. 
Yet  a  philosopher  of  their  days — were  it  Newton  him 
self — would  scarcely  comprehend  the  latest  treatise  on 
the  subject,  without  preliminary  study.  For  hundreds 
of  acute  and  patient  minds,  in  the  constant  investigation 
of  the  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  have  added 
fact  after  fact  to  the  knowledge  then  reached,  until  the 
whole  aspect  of  astronomical  science  has  changed. 
Eleven  new  planets,  and  three  new  satellites  have  been 
added  to  our  system,  their  dimensions  and  orbits  calcu 
lated,  and  their  relations  to  other  bodies  explained. 
The  distance  of  the  fixed  stars,  which  was  once  thought 
to  be  an  impossible  problem,  has  been  measured,  and 
some  of  those  stars,  inconceivably  remote  as  they  are, 
weighed.  A  new  system  of  binary  and  tnnary  stars, 
with  their  positions,  their  motions,  their  periodical 
brightness,  have  been  discovered,  and  the  law  of  gravi 
tation  shown  to  prevail  among  them,  linking  them  to 
our  own  simpler  system.  A  large  number  of  comets, 
with  their  precise  paths  ;  immense  circles  of  meteoric 
bodies,  with  their  periodical  changes  ;  and  Kirkwood's 
recent  law,  which  binds  the  entire  system  in  harmony, 
have  been  added  to  our  knowledge. 


160  The  Last  Half -Century. 

Kepler  predicted  that  between  the  orbits  of  Mars  and 
Jupiter,  a  large  planet  ought  to  be  found,  and,  strange 
to  say,  the  very  opening  of  the  present  century  was 
illustrated  by  the  discovery  of  four  small  planets,  Ceres, 
Pallas,  Juno,  and  Vesta,  occupying  the  very  place  antici 
pated.  Ceres,  the  first  of  these,  was  discovered  by 
Piazzi,  at  Palermo,  in  1801  ;  Pallas,  the  second  of  them, 
by  Dr.  Olbers,  of  Bremen,  in  1802  ;  Juno,  the  third, 
by  Mr.  Harding,  in  1804  ;  and  Vesta,  the  fourth,  by  Dr. 
Olbers,  in  1807.  After  the  discovery  of  the  third,  Dr. 
Olbers  suggested  the  idea  that  they  were  the  fragments  of 
a  planet  that  had  been  burst  in  pieces  ;  and,  considering 
that  they  must  all  have  diverged  from  one  point  in  the 
original  orbit,  and  ought  to  return  to  the  opposite  point, 
he  examined  these  parts  of  the  heavens,  and  thus  dis 
covered  the  planet  Vesta.  But  though  this  principle  was 
in  the  possession  of  astronomers,  nearly  forty  years 
elapsed  before  any  other  planetary  fragment  was  dis 
covered.  At  last,  in  1845,  Mr.  Encke,  of  Driessen,  in 
Prussia,  discovered  the  fragment  called  Astraea,  and  in 
1847  another,  called  Hebe.  In  the  same  year,  Mr. 
Hind  discovered  other  two,  Iris  and  Flora.  In  1848, 
Mr.  Graham,  an  Irish  astronomer,  discovered  a  ninth 
fragment,  called  Metis.  In  1849,  ^r-  Gasparis,  of 
Naples,  discovered  another,  which  he  calls  Hygeia ; 
and,  within  the  last  three  months,  the  same  astronomer 
has  discovered  the  eleventh  fragment,  to  which  he  has 
given  the  name  of  Parthenope.  "But  human  genius 
has  been  permitted  to  triumph  over  greater  difficulties. 
The  planet  Neptune  was  discovered  before  a  ray  of  its 
light  had  entered  the  human  eye.  By  a  law  of  the  solar 
system  just  disclosed,  we  can  determine  the  original 
magnitude  of  the  broken  planet  long  after  it  has  been 
shattered  into  fragments,  and  we  might  have  determined 
it  even  after  a  single  fragment  had  proved  its  existence. 


The  Last  Half -Century.  161 

This  law  we  owe  to  Daniel  Kirkwood,  of  Pottsville,  a 
humble  American,  who,  like  the  illustrious  Kepler, 
struggled  to  find  something  new  among  the  arithmetical 
relations  of  the  planetary  elements." 

"  In  passing  from  our  solar  system  to  the  frontier  of  the 
sidereal  universe  around  us,"  says  Sir  David  Brewster, 
"we  traverse  a  gulf  of  inconceivable  extent.  If  we  rep 
resent  the  radius  of  the  solar  system,  or  of  Neptune's 
orbit  (which  is  2,900  millions  of  miles),  by  a  line  two 
miles  long,  the  interval  between  our  system,  or  the 
orbit  of  Neptune,  and  the  nearest  fixed  star,  will  be 
greater  than  the  whole  circumference  of  our  globe — or 
equal  to  a  length  of  27,600  miles.  The  parallax  of 
the  nearest  fixed  star  being  supposed  to  be  one  second, 
its  distance  from  the  sun  will  be  nearly  412,370  times 
the  radius  of  the  Earth's  orbit ;  or  13,746  times  that  of 
Neptune,  which  is  thirty  times  as  far  from  the  Sun  as 
the  Earth.  And  yet  to  that  distant  zone  has  the  genius 
of  man  traced  the  Creator's  arm  working  the  wonders 
of  his  power,  and  diffusing  the  gifts  of  his  love — the 
heat  and  the  light  of  suns — the  necessary  elements  of 
physical  and  intellectual  life.  It  is  by  means  of  the 
gigantic  telescope  of  Lord  Rosse,  that  we  have  become 
acquainted  with  the  form  and  character  of  those  great 
assemblages  of  stars  which  compose  the  sidereal  uni 
verse.  " 

In  these  instances  we  speak  of  a  science  which  began 
many  centuries  ago,  and  which  was  supposed  at  the  end 
of  the  last  century  to  be  almost  perfect.  How  much 
more  striking  the  advances  of  the  mind  in  sciences 
which  were  then  unknown  !  Geology,  but  barely  heard 
of  in  the  fanciful  conjectures  of  Buffon,  Hutton,  Whis- 
ton,  etc.,  has  since  been  erected  into  a  distinct  depart 
ment  of  knowledge.  It  embraces  millions  of  well- 
observed  and  carefully  recorded  facts ;  it  has  arrived  at 


1 62  The  Last  Half* Century. 

the  most  impressive  and  startling  generalizations  ;  and 
it  has  laid  bare  the  history  of  the  globe  for  thousands 
of  years.  All  continents,  islands,  seas,  coal-pits,  and 
oceans  have  been  explored  by  its  devotees,  and  it  is 
rapidly  advancing  to  a  confirmation  of  a  beautiful 
theory  of  the  material  universe.  Public  encouragement 
has  been  conjoined  with  private  enterprise  in  the  prose 
cution  of  its  objects ;  the  leading  governments  of 
Europe,  and  most  of  the  States  of  the  Union,  have  sent 
out  expeditions  to  facilitate  its  researches  ;  and  there  is 
no  considerable  portion  of  the  globe,  except  at  inacces 
sible  heights  or  depths,  or  among  barbarous  nations, 
where  the  geologist  has  not  been  at  work  with  his 
hammer  and  spade. 

Half  a  century  ago  huge  bones  were  dug  out  of  the 
alluvion  ;  the  forms  of  reptiles,  fishes,  and  shells  were 
embedded  in  the  solid  rocks ;  gigantic  ferns  and  other 
tropical  plants  were  found  among  the  coal  strata,  but 
they  attracted  little  notice  and  had  no  name.  Now  the 
classification  of  the  fossil  world  is  well-nigh  as  complete 
and  exact  as  that  of  existing  life.  The  fossil  species, 
animal  and  vegetable,  discovered  and  classed,  amount 
to  nearly  ten  thousand  ;  and  the  additions  continually 
made  to  this  number,  riot  merely  tend  to  complete  the 
series  of  these  remains  of  former  conditions  of  the 
earth,  but  often  even  fill  up  the  lacuna  or  gaps  in  the 
forms  of  animal  life  around  us.  The  Memoir  of  Owen 
on  British  Fossil  Marine  Reptiles  is  a  striking  example 
of  what  has  been  done  in  a  single  subdivision  of  the 
subject.  The  results  obtained  by  this  eminent  natural 
ist  from  microscopic  examination  of  the  internal  struc 
ture  of  teeth,  are  further  curiously  illustrative  of  that 
strictness  and  minuteness  of  research  which  have  been 
extended  to  every  part  of  comparative  anatomy,  as  well 
of  fossils  as  of  existing  animal  life.  And  yet  more  re- 


The  Last  Half -Century.  16 


o 


markable  in  this  light  are  the  discoveries  of  Ehrenberg 
among  the  fossil  Infusoria,  showing  conditions  and 
changes  of  animal  life  before  unknown  ;  and  the  pro 
duction,  from  the  silicious  or  calcareous  coverings  of 
those  microscopic  beings,  of  aggregate  masses  of  some 
of  the  hardest  rocks  forming  the  crust  of  the  globe. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  all  departments  of  miner 
alogy  and  Natural  History,  whose  students  have  spread 
like  a  net-work  of  observers  over  the  whole  face  of  the 
earth,  diligently  laboring  without  cessation  in  the  col 
lection  of  materials  or  in  the  description  of  nations,  and 
transmitting  to  great  central  depositories  the  results  of 
their  labor,  which,  when  they  are  once  got  together, 
are  arranged  and  classified  into  an  instructive  and  beau 
tiful  order.  The  gigantic  labors  of  Cuvier,  St.  Hilaire, 
Edwards,  Kirby,  Spence,  and  ten  thousand  others,  have 
mainly  fallen  within  the  present  century. 

In  respect  to  Natural  History,  it  is  stated,  that  owing 
to  increased  zeal  and  enterprise  of  naturalists — favored, 
indeed,  by  facilities  of  travel  before  unknown — the 
number  of  distinct  species  collected  and  classified  within 
the  last  twenty  years,  has  been  nearly  doubled  in  every 
class.  We  might  particularize  the  ratio  of  increase  of 
each,  but  will  merely  state  as  instances,  that  the  Mam 
malia,  numbered  in  1828,  by  Cuvier  and  Desmarest, 
at  seven  hundred,  now  reach  nearly  one  thousand  two 
hundred  ;  the  Fishes,  estimated  somewhat  earlier,  by 
Laeepede,  at  two  thousand,  are  now  increased  to  about 
eight  thousand  ;  while  the  Insects,  calculated  by  Hum- 
boldt,  in  1821,  at  forty-four  thousand,  have  at  this 
time  reached  the  amount  of  more  than  one  hundred 
thousand  collected  species  !  A  profuse  variety  in  the 
forms  of  animal  life,  scarcely  less  confounding  to  the 
imagination  than  are  the  numbers  by  which  we  meas 
ure  the  heavens,  or  record  the  velocity  and  vibrations 


164  The  Last  Half -Century. 

of  light.  We  might  draw  from  the  progress  of  Botany 
instances  not  less  remarkable,  did  our  limits  allow  of 
such  detail. 

The  foundations  of  chemistry  were  laid  by  Black, 
Fourcroy,  and  Lavoisier,  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
last  century ;  but  its  most  substantial  acquisitions  and 
most  rapid  advances  are  owing  to  the  law  of  definite 
proportions,  revealed  by  Dalton,  in  the  year  1803,  and 
extended  and  conformed  by  Berzelius,  Wollaston,  Gay- 
Lussac,  and  their  successors.  This  has  given  a  mathe 
matical  basis  to  chemical  affinities,  and  enabled  ex 
perimenters  to  get  deeper  into  the  secrets  of  nature  than 
they  ever  before  penetrated.  That  all  bodies,  in  their 
interior-structure,  had  a  fixed  and  invariable  composi 
tion,  that  they  would  combine  and  replace  each  other 
in  determinate  proportions,  of  weight  or  volume,  that 
these  proportions  could  be  expressed  in  numbers,  whose 
ratios  could  be  arranged  in  certain  simple  series  of 
multiples  so  as  to  yield  numerical  formulae  instead  of 
vague  tables  of  names — these  were  the  pregnant  truths 
which  presented  the  key  to  nature,  and  unlocked  the 
storehouses  of  a  vast  knowledge.  It  showed  that  one 
great  law,  capable  of  numerical  statement,  lay  at  the 
base  of  all  material  phenomena,  determining  the  rela 
tions  of  the  invisible  atoms  of  matter,  and  the  largest 
visible  globes,  and  subjecting  the  minutest  as  well  as 
the  grandest  portions  of  creation — the  mote  in  the  sun 
beam  as  well  as  the  sun  itself— to  the  most  precise  and 
unchanging  expression.  That  compound  bodies  should 
unite  together  in  multiples  of  their  combining  propor 
tions,  as  well  as  in  single  equivalents,  was  an  almost 
inevitable  inference  from  the  same  law.  But  when  our 
knowledge  in  that  direction  was  further  extended  by 
the  discovery  of  Isomerism,  which  showed  that  the 
same  elements  combine  in  exactly  the  same  proper- 


The  Last  Half -Century.  i65 

tions,  yet  produce  compounds  of  different  chemical 
properties, — and  by  Isomorphism,  or  the  fact  that  the 
chemical  elements  of  certain  bodies  may  be  arranged 
in  groups  so  related  together,  that  when  similar  com 
binations  are  formed  from  elements  belonging  to  two, 
three,  or  more  of  them,  such  combination  will  crystallize 
in  the  same  geometric  forms, — new  floods  of  light  were 
thrown  into  the  darker  recesses  of  Nature. 

To  enumerate  the  results  of  these  doctrines  would  be 
to  write  a  complete  history  of  chemical  science — to  de 
scribe  all  its  important  decompositions  of  gases,  earths, 
and  alkalies — to  expound  its  manifold  combinations, 
whereby  it  has  produced  so  many  new  substances,  un 
known  in  nature,  and  giving  to  it  an  almost  creative 
dignity — to  unfold  its  reductions  of  various  gases  into 
the  liquid  or  solid  form,  to  explain  the  phenomena  of 
catalysis  and  of  compound  radicals,  and  to  expatiate 
over  the  endless  field  of  organic  chemistry,  which  the 
daring  and  brilliant  Liebig  has  cultivated  with  such 
fruitful  results.  It  is  enough  to  say,  that  every  part  of 
the  material  world  has  been  subjected  to  the  crucible  or 
the  retort,  and  made  to  give  up  its  secrets,  while  the 
mysterious  streams  of  life  itself,  in  the  animal  economy, 
are  ascended  almost  to  their  source. 

In  electricity,  the  relation  of  which  to  lightning  was  dis 
closed  in  the  well-known  experiment  of  Franklin  toward 
the  close  of  the  last  century,  the  first  grand  impulse 
was  given  by  Volta,  in  the  year  1804,  and  was  followed 
by  Oersted's  experiments  in  magnetism,  and  the  identi 
fication  of  the  electric  and  magnetic  forces  as  one  ele 
ment.  The  further  determination  by  Faraday  of  the 
identity  of  voltaic  and  animal  electricity,  and  his  recent 
researches  on  electric  induction,  electrotyles,  and  the 
measurement  of  electric  power,  have  opened  new  and 
fertile  questions,  and  carried  the  sciences  forward  to  the 


1 66  The  Last  Half -Century. 

most  brilliant  practical  applications,  and  the  verge  of  as 
tounding  developments. 

"  In  optical  science,  the  discoveries  of  Young,  Fres- 
nel,  Malus,  Brewster,  and  others  scarcely  less  eminent, 
as  to  the  diffraction  and  interference  of  light — double 
refraction  and  polarization  in  its  several  forms  and  inci 
dents — the  phenomena  connected  with  the  optical  axes 
of  crystals,  and  other  properties  of  this  great  element — 
gave  a  sudden  impulse  and  new  directions  to  the  inquiry 
which  the  genius  of  Newton  had  originated.  The  un- 
dulatory  theory  of  light,  fortified  by  these  discoveries, 
became  the  means  of  carrying  them  yet  further ;  afford 
ing  anticipations  of  unattained  results — as  in  the  case 
of  the  conversion  of  the  plane  polarization  of  light  into 
the  circular — which  it  was  the  province  of  the  most 
refined  experiment  to  justify  and  realize.  And  when 
Arago  found  it  possible,  through  certain  phenomena  of 
polarized  light,  to  determine  by  a  mere  fragment  of  Ice 
land  crystal,  whether  the  light  of  comets  is  their  own  or 
not,  and  whether  that  of  the  sun  is  from  its  solid  body, 
or  a  gaseous  envelope  around  it,  it  was  evident  that  we 
were  entering  into  the  midst  of  principles  and  relations 
of  the  highest  order.  About  the  same  period  the  sev 
eral  phenomena  of  the  solar  spectrum,  ascertained  by 
the  elder  Herschel,  Wollaston,  and  Frauenhofer,  laid  a 
foundation  for  those  more  extended  and  delicate  re 
searches  which  have  rendered  the  investigation  of  the 
solar  beam,  in  its  whole  complex  constitution,  but  par 
ticularly  in  its  chemical  relations  and  application  to  pho 
tography  and  thermography,  one  of  the  most  interesting 
problems  in  physical  science,  the  complete  solution  of 
which  is  yet  reserved  as  a  triumph  for  future  inquiry."* 

*  See  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Re-view,  on  the  "  Present  State  of 
the  Physical  Sciences"  (from  which  we  have  merely  condensed  these 
facts  and  illustrations),  for  a  more  extended  history  of  scientific  discovery. 


The  Last  Half -Century.  167 

Let  us  take  Meteorology  as  another  example — a  part 
of  our  knowledge  still  very  imperfect,  from  the  number  of 
elements  conjointly  concerned,  and  the  complexity  of  all 
the  phenomena,  yet  how  entirely  altered  from  its  state 
forty  years  ago  !  With  instruments  far  more  perfect, 
and  at  innumerable  stations  over  the  face  of  the  globe,  the 
most  minute  and  authentic  registers  are  now  kept  of  the 
weight,  temperature,  and  humidity  of  the  atmosphere — 
of  its  electrical  and  magnetic  conditions — of  the  direc 
tion,  velocity,  and  duration  of  winds — of  the  quantity 
of  rain  falling — and  of  the  meteoric  phenomena  which 
more  irregularly  affect  our  planet,  either  from  causes 
proper  to  itself,  or  from  external  agents  in  its  orbital  pas 
sage  through  space. 

Physical  Geography,  too,  even  in  the  early  part  of 
this  century,  was  not  an  object  of  systematic  study.  It 
is  now  pursued  with  all  the  ardor  that  characterizes  sci 
entific  research  ;  has  attained  the  most  beautiful  and 
comprehensive  results  ;  and  fairly  illuminates  our  earth, 
and  with  it  the  whole  social  history  of  man,  by  the 
splendor  of  its  various  generalizations.  The  magnifi 
cent  Physical  Atlas  of  Johnson,  recently  published,  is 
an  admirable  evidence  of  the  indefatigable  activity  with 
which  it  has  been  prosecuted. 

We  might  further  speak  of.  the  various  discoveries 
regarding  Heat,  as  it  comes  to  us  in  the  solar  ray — as  it 
exists  in  planetary  space — as  it  is  present  in  the  interior 
of  the  earth — and  as  it  acts,  or  is  acted  upon  by  the 
various  forms  of  matter,  in  reflexion,  absorption,  radia 
tion,  conduction,  polarization,  etc. ; — researches  begun 
by  Black  and  Leslie ;  extended  under  high  mathemati 
cal  formulae  by  Fourier;  and  by  the  elaborate  experi 
ments  of  Dulong,  Melloni,  and  others,  carried  forward 
to  new  and  unexpected  results.  We  might  yet  further 
allude  to  the  physiology  of  animal  and  vegetable  life, 


1 68  The  Last  Half -Century. 

\vhere  the  attainments  have  been  equally  remarkable  ; 
bringing  all  sciences  to  bear  upon  vital  phenomena — 
better  defining  the  types  of  form  and  structural  devel 
opment — substituting  cellular  for  vascular  action  in  em 
bryology  and  the  formation  of  tissues — applying  chem 
istry  to  objects,  and  through  methods,  heretofore  untried, 
classifying  anew  the  structure  and  functions  of  the 
nervous  system,  and  from  every  side  approaching  nearer 
to  the  mysterious  springs  of  life. 

We  might  also  refer  to  the  series  of  observations — 
not  yet  science — made  by  the  followers  of  Gall  and 
Spurzheim  on  the  anatomy  and  functions  of  the  brain  ; 
to  those  wonderful  manifestations  of  Animal  Magnet 
ism,  which  are  too  well  authenticated  as  facts  to  be  de 
nied,  though  not  yet  referred  to  any  satisfactory  laws  ; 
to  the  gradual  amelioration  and  improvement  of  medi 
cal  science,  and  the  diffusion  everywhere  of  better  no 
tions  as  to  life  and  health  ;  but  that  we  have  scarcely 
space  to  indicate  the  existence  of  what  are  deemed  cer 
tain  sciences,  arid  cannot,  therefore,  refer  to  those  which 
are  yet  unacknowledged  by  the  majority  of  the  estab 
lished  authorities  in  such  matters. 

Many  branches  of  science,  it  is  true,  are  yet  in  their 
infancy;  they  are  only  employed  in  the  collection  of  facts, 
and  in  the  preparation  •  of  individual  isolated  results. 
But  this  is  the  necessary  course  of  all  sound  induction  : 
it  begins  with  observation  ;  it  concludes  with  principles. 
All  sciences  at  the  outset  are  mere  accumulations  of  de 
tails.  But  in  the  course  of  time,  the  efforts  of  scientific 
explorers  take  another  direction.  They  see  that  their 
work  is  not  separated  from  that  of  others  ;  that  all  the 
objects  of  their  study  are  more  or  less  directly  connected  ; 
that  one  can  scarcely  advance  without  the  other  ;  that 
discovery  in  any  one  throws  light  upon  the  path  of  the 
others  ;  and  that  each  new  relation  detected  in  any  depart- 


The  Last  Half -Century.  169 

ment  becomes  an  additional  bond  of  union  for  the 
whole.  Heat  and  light,  and  electricity  and  magnetism, 
are  melting  into  one  single  science  ;  this,  again,  is  more 
and  more  involved  in  general  physics  ;  and  even  the 
three  kingdoms  of  animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral  na 
ture,  once  thought  insuperably  distinct,  have  lost  their 
boundaries,  and  are  blending  into  one  physiology.  An 
identity  of  composition  and  structure  is  exhibited  in  all 
parts  of  the  vegetable  world,  which  is  but  an  integral 
manifestation  of  all  the  possible  forms  of  vegetable  life. 
So  the  whole  animal  kingdom  is  but  a  single  collective 
animal,  each  class  of  which  manifests  one  of  the  epochs 
of  its  development. 

Nor  among  the  physical  sciences  alone  are  these  ties 
of  a  close  affinity  maintained.  Between  the  world  of 
mind  and  the  world  of  matter,  identical  processes  and 
analogous  phenomena  are  every  day  unfolded.  The 
development  of  humanity  proves  to  be  but  the  develop 
ment,  on  a  larger  scale,  of  the  individual  man.  Cos 
mology  and  noology  proceed  in  parallel  lines,  while  the 
perfect  accord  of  religion,  philosophy,  and  science  is 
hourly  receiving  new  proofs.  Nature,  amid  the  pro 
digious  variety  and  shock  of  her  forces,  is  ever  the 
same, — a  magnificent  and  glorious  universality,  evolved 
by  a  few  simple  laws  from  an  eternal  and  pervading 
unity ;  and  modern  science,  lately  threatened  to  be 
engulfed  in  the  deluge  of  its  own  materials,  finds  its 
chief  glory  in  exploring  the  wonderful  analogies  of 
creation. 

V.     MECHANICAL    IMPROVEMENTS,     ETC. 

The  applications  of  science  to  the  useful  arts  and 
mechanical  improvement,  present  results  more  likely 
to  impress  the  general  mind  than  any  of  its  successes, 
however  glorious,  in  the  sphere  of  abstract  principle. 


i  jo  The  Last  Half -Century. 

The  former  are  tangible  and  visible  results,  which  pro 
duce  tremendous  changes  in  practical  life,  so  that  while 
they  are  on  a  level  with  everybody's  observation,  they 
more  or  less  affect  everybody's  interest.  The  various 
phenomena  of  heat  are  merely  curious  to  the  great 
majority  of  men,  so  long  as  they  are  confined  to  the 
region  of  law  or  general  fact,  but  when  they  are  made 
to  bear  on  the  best  and  cheapest  means  of  providing 
fuel,  or  on  the  powers  of  steam  as  a  propelling  agent, 
they  become  of  absorbing  importance  to  all  of  us. 

Among  the  most  remarkable  contributions  that 
science  has  lately  made  to  the  arts,  are  the  innumerable 
methods  of  gliding  the  coarser  metals  with  those  which 
are  more  rare  and  valuable,  which  are  imparting  so 
much  elegance  and  grace  to  many  kinds  of  useful  art  ; 
gun-cotton,  an  explosive  material,  much  cheaper,  and 
quite  as  effective  for  many  purposes,  as  gunpowder  ; 
sulphuric  ether  and  chloroform,  those  compounds 
which  have  the  singular  property  of  suspending  the 
sensibility  of  the  nerves  to  pain  ;  and,  most  curious  of 
all,  the  various  photographic  processes,  made  known 
by  Daguerre,  Niepce,  Talbot,  and  others,  wherein  the 
sun  becomes  the  painter  of  pictures,  and  the  thousand 
fold  objects  of  nature  are  delicately  preserved  on 
imperishable  tablets.  The  machines  for  economizing 
time  and  expense,  and  for  facilitating  the  different 
processes,  in  agriculture  and  manufacture,  are  number 
less.  Patents  issued  from  the  office  at  Washington 
alone,  amount,  since  A.  D.  1800,  to  over  fifteen  thou 
sand — the  greater  part  of  which,  it  is  supposed,  have 
gone  into  successful  operation,  and  in  one  way  or 
another,  abridged  the  labor  of  human  hands. — Every 
year  increases,  by  an  accelerating  ratio,  the  number  of 
these  contrivances  and  inventions.  In  fact,  mere  me 
chanical  implements  promise  to  dispense  altogether  with 


The  Last  Half -Century.  i/i 

the  fatiguing  and  wearing  kinds  of  human  agency. 
What  are  to  be  the  consequences  to  society,  not  only 
in  cheapening  products,  but  in  relieving  laborers  from 
oppressive  and  degrading  toils  ? 

These  results  are,  no  doubt,  threatening  enough  to 
the  temporary  welfare  of  the  artisan  and  the  laborer, 
but  it  has  been  proved  that  in  the  end  they  are  a 
vast  benefit,  not  merely  to  society  itself,  but  to  those 
who,  in  the  outset,  are  molested  and  almost  destroyed 
by  their  success.  By  cheapening  products,  and  creating 
demands  for  industry  in  new  directions,  they  aid  the 
progress  of  society,  and  extend  the  means  of  human 
well-being. 

But  the  grandest  triumphs  of  inventive  genius,  during 
the  last  half-century,  have  been  achieved  within  the 
province  of  Commerce.  The  plank-road,  the  canal, 
the  steamboat,  and  the  railroad,  are  all  the  products  of 
the  last  few  years.  At  the  close  of  the  European  wars 
of  the  last  century,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  military 
roads  inherited  from  the  Romans,  and  the  roads  of  the 
same  class  constructed  by  Napoleon,  the  means  of  com 
munication  between  distant  parts  was  almost  confined 
to  inland  seas  and  the  larger  rivers.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  the  maritime  cities  and  provinces  attained  such  dis- 
proportioned  wealth.  The  want  of  modes  of  transit 
imposed  insuperable  obstacles  to  internal  commerce ; 
such  roads  as  they  had  were  impracticable,  and  the 
constant  recurrence  of  desolating  wars  diverted  the 
minds  of  both  princes  and  the  people  from  this  most 
important  element  of  civilization. 

The  time  formerly  consumed  by  common  carriers 
over  such  routes  is,  now-a-days,  incredible.  The  post 
man  from  Selkirk  to  Edinburgh,  a  distance  of  less 
than  forty  miles,  was  always  a  fortnight  in  going  and 
returning.  For  years,  after  the  beginning  of  the  pres- 


1/2  The  Last  Half -Century. 

ent  century,  the  mail  time  between  this  city  and  Albany 
was  eight  days.  Emigrants  to  the  Genesee  Valley,  only 
twenty  years  ago,  were  sometimes  twenty  days  in  reach 
ing  their  new  purchases.  There  is  a  book  still  extant, 
written  by  a  lady,  within  the  memory  of  middle-aged 
persons,  to  describe  a  perilous  journey  she  made  from 
Boston  to  New  York.  Even  as  late  as  1835,  there  were 
only  seven  coaches  that  ran  daily  from  the  capital  of 
England  to  that  of  Scotland,  and  until  several  years 
within  the  present  century,  the  internal  transport  of 
nearly  all  the  trade  of  Great  Britain  was  performed  by 
wagons,  at  the  slowest  rates  and  an  enormous  expense. 
The  charge  for  carriage  averaged  about  fifteen  pence,  or 
thirty  cents,  a  ton,  per  mile.  Of  course,  all  bulky 
articles  were  excluded  from  exchange.  These  articles 
are  now  carried  over  the  same  ground,  the  same  dis 
tance,  at  the  rate  of  a  penny,  or  two  cents,  per  ton. 
The  speed  of  the  wagons,  then,  did  not  exceed  twenty- 
four  miles  a  day ;  steam-cars  now  run  thirty  miles  the 
hour. 

Canals  were  known  to  the  ancients,  and  have  been 
used,  in  a  small  way,  by  all  civilized  nations,  but 
especially  in  Holland,  for  many  years.  But  the  world 
did  not  fully  awake  to  their  importance,  until  it  was 
aroused  by  the  vehement  enthusiasm  with  which  the 
State  of  New  York,  in  1817,  entered  upon  the  project 
of  the  Erie  Canal.  Since  then,  thousands  upon  thou 
sands  of  miles  of  canal  have  been  made  by  England, 
France,  Russia,  Sweden,  and  Belgium,  as  well  as  by 
our  own  country. 

The  invention  of  steamboats  for  river  navigation,  and 
of  locomotives  for  railroads,  has  superseded  canals, 
and  invested  them  with  an  air  of  antiquity.  It  was  only 
in  1807,  that  Fulton  put  his  first  vessel  on  the  Hudson, 
and  now  our  rivers,  our  lakes,  our  vast  inland  seas,  and 


The  Last  Half -Century.  173 

the  ocean  itself,  are  covered  with  steamers,  while  the 
entire  surface  of  Europe  and  North  America  is  reticu 
lated  with  net-works  of  iron,  in  which  iron-ribbed  and 
flame-breathing  monsters  whirl  enormous  loads  of 
freight  and  multitudes  of  passengers  with  the  rapidity 
of  the  bird's  flight.  Add  to  this,  the  nineteen  hundred 
steamboats  in  America — the  one  thousand  in  Eng 
land,  and  the  several  thousands  of  other  nations, 
and  we  shall  get  some  idea  of  the  incalculable,  yet 
silent  revolutions  that  have  sprung  from  a  simple 
series  of  inventions,  which  almost  any  child  can  com 
prehend  ! 

Yet  more  astonishing  than  the  railway  is  the  Magnetic 
Telegraph,  the  exploits  of  which  are  literally  miracu 
lous,  annihilating  space  and  anticipating  time.  The 
extremities  of  the  globe  are  brought  into  immediate 
contact ;  the  merchant,  the  friend,  or  the  lover  con 
verses  with  whom  he  wishes,  though  thousands  of  miles 
away,  as  if  they  occupied  the  same  parlor ;  and  the 
speech  uttered  in  Washington  to-day,  may  be  read  at 
St.  Louis  an  hour  before  it  was  delivered.  Could  the 
wires  be  extended  around  the  globe,  we  should  be  able 
to  hear  the  news  one  day  before  it  occurred.  Surely,  in 
view  of  such  results,  the  gas  discoveries  of  Mr.  Paine, 
or  the  aerial  machines  of  Mr.  Wise,  seem  not  only 
possible  but  certain. 

It  is  well,  therefore,  on  this  opening  year  of  a  new  half- 
century,  and  as  the  crowning  glory  of  modern  industry, 
that  it  should  receive  the  tribute  of  a  World's  Fair,  in 
which  men  and  women,  led  on  by  princes  and  emperors, 
shall  come  from  j;he  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  to  do 
it  homage  ;  when  its  gorgeous  and  delicate  products 
shall  be  enshrined  in  a  crystal  palace  hitherto  known 
only  to  fairy  lore  ;  and  all  the  wealth,  the  intellect,  the 
beauty,  the  skill,  and  the  power  of  mankind,  combine 


174  The  Last  Half -Century. 

to  assist  in  its  apotheosis.  Never  before  has  there  been 
called  together  such  an  assemblage  for  such  a  purpose. 
May  we  not  say  that  it  portends  an  era  of  national  good 
will  and  universal  peace  ?  and,  that  the  mechanical 
improvements  that  have  removed  the  material  barriers 
of  nations,  will  be  followed  by  those  spiritual  advances 
which  shall  melt  all  hearts  into  one  ? 

CONCLUSION. 

Had  this  progress  of  mankind  taken  place  in  the 
scientific  or  material  sphere  alone,  it  would  have  been 
a  doubtful  question  whether  the  fact  should  be  regarded 
as  a  cause  of  rejoicing  or  sorrow.  But,  fortunately,  the 
Moral  and  Religious  advancement  of  our  race,  uki- 
mating  in  improved  social  conditions,  has  been  no  less 
marked  and  encouraging  than  any  of  its  other  charac 
teristics.  The  world  has  been  as  active  in  doing  good, 
as  it  has  in  increasing  comforts — are  they  not,  after  all, 
much  the  same? — and  in  the  comprehensiveness  of  its 
benevolent  undertakings,  rivals  the  zeal  of  science  and 
the  enterprise  of  trade.  The  eyes  of  Philanthropy, 
with  a  sedulous  and  tearful  care,  have  sought  out  the 
lurking-place  of  indigence  and  misery,  and  ministered 
to  their  wants, — comprehending  in  their  providence, 
the  health  and  habitations  of  the  poor,  as  well  as  the 
deeper  needs  of  the  vicious,  and  striving  to  elevate  all, 
with  an  impartial  hand,  in  their  physical,  intellectual, 
and  moral  condition  !  How  numerous  and  well- 
managed  the  charitable  organizations  of  the  day  !  How 
extensive  the  agencies,  and  how  indefatigable  the  zeal 
of  those  great  religious  societies,  which  propose  to 
themselves  nothing  less  than  the  Christianization  of  the 
world !  Above  all,  what  thorough  and  penetrating 
significance  in  the  problems  raised  by  what,  many  in 


The  Last  Half -Century.  i;5 

fear  and  others  in  contempt,  designate  as  Socialism, 
but  which,  in  reality,  despite  the  occasional  folly  of 
its  disciples,  looks  to  the  adjustment  of  all  political  and 
social  relations  on  a  basis  of  perfect  equity  and  truth  ? 
The  very  thought  of  such  a  consummation  fills  the 
generous  mind  with  the  most  ardent  wishes  for  its  suc 
cess.  Was  a  nobler  scheme  ever  conceived, — one  more 
benevolent,  more  pacific,  more  promising  of  good  in 
every  way,  than  that  of  the  Organization  of  Labor? 
Oh  !  how  the  heart  kindles  with  hope  and  sympathy 
when  it  thinks  of  the  vast  forces  of  human  society. — 
hitherto  too  often  turned  to  mere  human  destruction, — 
combined  in  a  unitary  effort  to  develop,  mature,  and 
elevate  every  individual  member  of  our  race  ! 


AMERICAN   AUTHORSHIP.* 


|LI  BABA,  when  he  entered  the  cave  of  the 
Forty  Thieves,  could  scarcely  have  been  more 
amazed  by  the  wealth  of  its  contents,  than 
some  people  will  be  by  the  contents  of  this  book.  Its 
very  title  flies  in  the  face  of  two  very  sacred  traditions. 
It  implies,  firstly,  that  the  ambiguous  class  of  men 
called  authors,  may  be  in  the  possession  of  Homes, — • 
consequently  of  wealth,  social  position,  and  respectabil 
ity  ;  and,  secondly,  that  among  the  three  thousand 
American  writers  who  pretend  to  the  name,  there  are 
some  at  least  who  are  really  authors  ;  by  which  is  meant, 
literary  creators  or  men  of  genius.  Are  not  both  of 
these,  assumptions  which  the  general  mind  will  regard  as 
extremely  bold. 

The  records  of  literary  adventure  have  produced  the 
impression  the  world  over,  that  authors  are  a  peculiar 
and  exceptional  class, — shiftless,  seedy,  and  improvident, 
who.  unable  to  live  by  any  of  the  recognized  methods 
of  society,  have  betaken  themselves  to  the  expedient  of 
living  by  their  wits.  It  is  understood  that  they  reside, 
when  they  reside  anywhere,  in  some  vacant  comer  of 
a  garret ;  that  they  pass  their  days  in  lurking  out  of  the 
way  of  bailiffs  and  landladies ;  and  that,  after  leading 


*The  Homes  of  American   Authors,  etc.,  etc. 
Co.      New  York,  1853. 

From  Putnam 's  Monthly,  January,  1853. 


G.  P.  Putnam  & 


American  Authorship.  177 

lives  of  vicissitude,  poverty,  neglect,  and  sorrow,  when 
they  come  to  die,  they  revenge  their  long  quarrel  with 
mankind  by  bequeathing  to  it  certain  inestimable 
treasures  of  poetry,  wit,  or  thought,  over  which  it  will 
gloat  and  glow  forever. 

Who  cannot  recall  a  multitude  of  disquisitions  writ 
ten  on  the  hapless  lot  of  the  poet  who  "  learned  by  suf 
fering  what  he  taught  in  song  ?"  How  often  have  liter 
ary  men  themselves  bewailed  the  cruel  injustice  of 
society  to  their  order  !  What  sighs  have  we  not  ex 
haled,  what  tears  not  wept,  over  the  pitiful  stories  of  mis 
conceived  and  unrewarded  genius  !  The  sad  experi 
ences  of  Savage,  the  miserable  death  of  Otway,  the  more 
miserable  death  of  Chatterton,  "the  sleepless  boy  who 
perished  in  his  pride,"  the  miscarriages  of  Burns,  the 
indigence  of  Coleridge,  the  protracted  struggles  of  Hook 
and  Hood,  the  suicide  of  Blanchard,  and  a  thousand 
other  mournful  histories,  are  still  fresh  in  all  our  mem 
ories.  Have  not  "the  calamities  of  authors,"  indeed, 
furnished  the  indefatigable  Disraeli  with  the  materials 
fora  volume?  Or  is  there  any  possibility  of  our  forget 
ting  those  lines  of  Moore,  how 

Bailiffs  will  seize  his  last  blanket  to-day, 

Whose  pall  shall  be  held  up  by  nobles  to-morrow  ? 

Schiller,  in  a  pretty  fable,  represents  Jupiter  as  dividing 
all  the  wealth  of  the  world  among  the  different  classes 
of  his  creatures.  To  the  kings  he  gives  taxes  and  tolls, 
to  the  farmers  lands,  to  the  merchants  trade,  and  to  the 
abbots  and  monks  most  excellent  wine  ;  but  after  having 
disposed  of  all  his  worldly  possessions,  he  espies  a  poet 
wandering  away  from  the  rest,  destitute,  shabby,  and  for 
lorn.  "  What  ho  !  my  good  fellow,"  exclaims  the  father 
of  men,  "  where  wert  thou  when  the  general  distribution 
8* 


178  American  Authorship. 

was  going  forward  ?"  The  bard  modestly  replied, 
"  Mine  eyes  were  drunk  with  the  glory  of  thy  coming, 
and  mine  ears  filled  with  the  harmonies  of  thy  heaven  !" 
When  the  monarch  of  the  gods,  apparently  no  less 
open  to  delicate  flattery  than  any  mortal,  rejoined  : 
"  Well,  it's  a  sad  case,  my  boy  !  I  have  nothing  left  on 
the  earth  to  give  you  ;  but,  as  a  compensation,  you  shall 
have,  after  death,  the  topmost  step  of  my  throne  in  the 
skies."  The  poet  was  doubtless  pleased,  and  went 
away  ;  and  ever  since,  it  is  said  that  this  has  been  the 
principal  inheritance  of  his  tribe. 

Incidents  and  memories  such  as  these  have  given  rise 
to  a  most  unfavorable  estimate  of  authorship  as  a  pro 
fession.  In  the  minds  of  many,  the  writing  of  sonnets 
is  equivalent  to  going  shirtless  ;  and  the  perpetration  of  a 
romance,  the  next  thing,  in  its  social  consequences,  to 
the  perpetration  of  crime.  And  although  the  distin 
guished  successes  of  a  few  individuals — the  facts,  for  in 
stance,  that  Scott  could  build  a  baronial  castle,  and  Dick 
ens  live  like  a  lord,  and  Disraeli  achieve  the  chancellor 
ship,  and  Bancroft  get  to  be  a  foreign  ambassador,  etc., 
have  partially  corrected  the  opinion,  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  a  majority  of  the  world  still  looks  upon  litera 
ture  as  no  better  than  a  miserable  and  desperate  dernier 
ressort.  Only  the  other  day,  Mr.  William  Jerdan,  him 
self  pretending  to  be  one  of  the  leading  critics  of  Great 
Britain,  wrote  a  book  which  is  one  long  wail  over  the  un 
happy  conditions  and  prospects  of  writers  as  a  class,  and 
an  earnest  appeal  to  young  men  to  avoid  the  professional 
pursuit  of  letters  as  they  would  avoid  any  temptation  of 
the  devil.  "  Let  no  man,"  he  says,  "  be  bred  to  litera 
ture,  for,  as  it  has  been  less  truly  said  of  another  occu 
pation,  it  will  not  be  bread  to  him.  Fallacious  hopes, 
bitter  disappointments,  uncertain  rewards,  vile  imposi 
tions,  and  censure  and  slander  from  the  oppressors,  are 


American  Authorship.  179 

his  lot  as  soon  as  he  puts  pen  to  paper  for  publication, 
or  risks  his  peace  of  mind  on  the  black,  black  sea  of 
printers'  ink.  "• 

This  is  the  old  story,  but  we  think  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  misconception  in  it  ;  at  least  we  ought  not,  from 
Mr.  Jerdan's  failure,  which  is  to  be  ascribed  to  his  own 
want  of  capacity  and  prudence,  to  infer  the  inevitable 
fate  of  the  whole  circle  of  authors.  Literature  is  as 
lucrative  and  promising  as  any  other  profession,  to  men 
who  are  really  qualified  to  discharge  its  exacting  and 
lofty  functions.  It  records  the  disastrous  rout  of  many 
of  its  followers,  because  so  many  rush  into  it  without 
the  requisite  capacities  ;  and  when  they  fail,  their  de 
feats  are  chronicled  for  all  the  world  to  read.  Hardly  a 
shiftless  Corydon  fails  in  walks  of  art  that  demand  the 
finest  endowments  of  the  mind,  that  he  or  his  friends 
do  not  parade  him  as  another  example  of  melancholy 
shipwreck,  as  if  he  deserved  or  could  fairly  have  antici 
pated  any  other  end.  Now,  if  the  same  note  were  taken 
of  the  miscarriages  in  law,  medicine,  and  divinity — if 
every  briefless  barrister,  every  physician  without  a  pa 
tient,  every  clergyman  without  a  cure,  could  make  his 
griefs  the  talk  of  the  town,  as  authors  manage  to  make 
theirs,  the  disadvantages  of  their  vocations  would  be  no 
less  apparent  than  those  of  letters,  and  literature  would 
no  longer  stand  solitary  in  its  aggravations. 

For,  it  is  not  true  that  literature  is  a  peculiarly  unkind 
and  unnatural  mother.  Her  favors  to  those  children  that 
are  worthy  of  her,  if  not  exuberant,  are  yet  not  stinted. 
Writing  is  not  so  productive  of  money  as  cotton  spin 
ning  or  merchandise,  because,  as  a  late  Westminster  Re 
view  argues,  the  conditions  of  literary  and  of  ordinary 
commercial  labor  are  very  different.  The  latter  sup 
plies  a  constant  want  :  the  former  ministers  only  to  an 
intellectual  luxury,  or  to  wants  that  do  not  wear  out  the 


180  American  Authorship. 

supply  with  such  rapidity  as  to  keep  up  a  high  and  in 
cessant  demand.  Both  must  he  regulated,  to  some  ex 
tent,  by  the  vulgar  law  of  supply  and  demand  ;  and  their 
profits,  by  the  same  law,  cannot  be  forced  beyond  the 
natural  level  of  cost  and  competition.  "The  latter 
combines  the  joint  action  of  capital  and  labor ;  it  feels 
a  continual  competition  ;  it  is  not  dependent  upon  the 
humor  or  the  accidents  of  the  time  ;  no  prosaic  transi 
tion  of  the  public  taste  converts  its  productions,  like 
poetry,  into  a  drug ;  however  people  may  become  in 
different  to  books,  they  are  never  likely  to  dispense  with 
shirts,  or  to  decline  the  advantage  of  the  steam-engine  ; 
and  although  the  writer  to  whose  merits  the  age  is  in 
sensible,  or  whose  merits  are  of  no  utility  to  the  age, 
may  be  left  to  starve,  the  manufacturer  will  thrive.  Is 
it  reasonable  to  protest  against  a  state  of  things  which 
has  been  inevitable  from  the  beginning  of  the  world, 
and  which  will  continue  to  be  inevitable,  so  long  as  the 
material  wants  of  the  world  must  be  served,  let  its  intel 
lectual  wants  shift  as  they  may  ?  The  aims  of  the  two 
classes  are  essentially  different,  and  each  has  its  own 
reward.  The  literary  man  has  a  glory  which  is  denied 
to  the  manufacturer,  nor  could  he  envy  the  latter  his 
wealth,  if  he  knew  how  to  appreciate  his  own  position 
at  its  true  value.  He  has  fame,  if  he  deserves  it, — 
honor,  if  he  merits  it  :  nor  need  he  doubt  of  achieving 
the  highest  social  distinctions,  if  he  asserts  his  right  to 
them  as  he  ought,  and  maintains  them  with  integrity 
and  self-respect  ;  while  the  other  may  be  left  to  the  un- 
envied  possession  of  wealth  and  obscurity." 

This  is  well  put  ;  but  it  should  also  be  admitted,  in 
behalf  of  literary  men,  to  explain  and  excuse,  if  not  to 
justify  their  complaints,  that  with  most  of  them,  the  dif 
ficulty  is  not  so  much  the  insufficiency  of  their  incomes, 
as  the  liberality  of  their  outgoes.  A  thousand  peculiar 


American  Authorship.  181 

temptations,  springing  partly  from  those  menial  suscep 
tibilities  which  difference  them  from  others,  and  partly 
from  their  social  aptitudes,  beset  them  to  spend  more 
than  they  make.  The  very  qualities  which  form  their 
greatest  glory,  are  those  often  which  lead  them  into  the 
deepest  humiliations.  If  they  were  as  hard,  as  unim 
aginative,  as  careful  of  the  main  chance,  as  the  cotton 
spinner  or  the  merchant,  they  would  grow  rich  like  the 
cotton  spinner  or  the  merchant  ;  but  they  are  not  so 
constructed.  The  delicacy  of  organization  out  of  which 
literature  comes,  renders  them  keenly  sensitive  also  to 
the  pressures  and  discomforts  of  existence, — to  the 
sands  which  grit  between  the  shell  of  their  outward 
condition  and  the  fleshy  fibres.  Yearning  then  to 
bring  their  surroundings  into  a  better  correspondence 
with  their  tastes,  their  perpetual  tendency  is  to  gather 
costly  appliances  and  comforts  about  them,  and  to 
shut  out  actual  existence  by  one  of  ideal  refinement. 
Again,  with  superior  powers  to  entertain,  or  an  elevated 
fame  to  render  their  acquaintance  a  distinction,  authors 
are  more  sought  for  than  others  by  general  society, 
where,  whether  they  contract  nice  or  dissipated  habits, 
they  equally  expose  themselves  to  expense.  It  is  im 
possible  to  keep  up  a  varied  and  generous  intercourse, 
without  falling  into  more  or  less  extravagance ;  and 
genius  with  its  irritable  fancies  and  impetuous  impulses, 
is  least  of  all  likely  to  resist  the  allurements  of  luxuri 
ous  living,  or  to  temper  the  seductions  of  taste  with  the 
cold  discipline  of  judgment.  Not  that  genius  is  ever 
destitute  of  judgment, — for  subtle,  strong,  unerring 
judgment  is  its  very  essence, — but  then  its  judgment  is 
the  theoretic  judgment,  which  is  displayed  in  the  creation 
and  providence  of  a  great  drama  or  poem,  and  not  the 
practical  judgment  which  controls  every-day  affairs.  It 
is  not  the  judgment  that  keeps  one  from  running  into 


1 82  American  Authorship. 

prodigality,  or,  for  want  of  an  appropriate  and  ample 
nourishment,  from  resort  to  questionable  indulgen 
ces.  Ah  !  then  the  clouds  darken  about  it  :  the  present 
grows  comfortless  and  the  future  minatory  ;  and  poor 
genius,  losing  its  freshness  and  glow,  is  genius  no 
more.  It  utters  its  wail  into  the  uncaring  universe,  like 
one  who  falls  at  midnight  from  some  on-rushing  steam 
ship,  and  hearing  no  reply  but  the  splash  of  his  own 
sinking,  goes  down  into  the  unyielding  depths  !  But  is 
the  world  to  blame  for  such  miscarriages?  Is  the 
literary  profession,  as  a  practical  pursuit,  to  blame?  Is 
such  a  lot  worse,  in  its  external  liabilities,  than  that  of 
other  men  ;  and  would  not  the  chimney-sweep  or  the 
lawyer,  who  should  forget  the  actual  conditions  of  social 
existence,  to  indulge  in  dreams  and  idealizations,  fail  as 
signally  as  the  author? 

Let  us  not  be  understood,  however,  to  maintain  that 
want  of  success  in  authorship  is  evidence  either  of  want 
of  merit  or  of  want  of  prudence.  We  mean  no  such 
thing  :  on  the  contrary,  we  know  that  works  of  the 
most  unquestionable  excellence  have  often  to  wait  a 
long  while  for  appreciators — that  genius,  as  a  general 
thing,  must  create  its  own  audience  ;  but  this  is  as  true 
of  other  professions  as  it  is  of  literature.  It  is  true  in 
art ;  true  in  science  ;  true  in  respect  to  mechanical  in 
ventions  ;  and  sometimes  true  in  practical  enterprise. 
All  that  we  design  to  urge  is  simply  that  authorship  is 
no  exception  to  other  pursuits.  If  competent  men  en 
gage  in  it  with  industry,  patience,  and  consistent  pur 
pose,  conducting  their  affairs  with  average  foresight, 
they  will  reap  at  the  least  the  average  pecuniary  rewards. 
The  depreciatory  view  that  prevails  is  both  unjust  and 
injurious  ; — unjust,  because  it  exaggerates  the  disparage 
ments  of  a  true  and  worthy  literary  life  ;  and  injurious, 
because  in  the  world's  estimate,  the  respectability  of  a  pur- 


American  A^lthoTsJ^ip.  183 

suit  mainly  depends  upon  what  the  Californians  call  the 
" prospecting,"  or  the  chance  of  turning  up  some  rav 
ishing  deposit  of  sunny  ore. 

Nowhere  has  the  literary  profession  been  supposed  to 
be  more  hopeless  than  in  the  United  States  ;  and  yet, 
we  are  persuaded  that  here  as  elsewhere,  in  spite  of  all 
drawbacks,  adventitious  or  necessary,  a  career  of  honor 
and  profit  is  open  to  all  who  engage  in  it  with  the 
proper  qualifications,  and  pursue  it  with  fidelity  and 
self-control.  We  do  not  say  that  the  pecuniary  rewards 
of  it  are  as  generous  as  they  ought  to  be,  or  probably 
will  be  hereafter  ;  we  do  not  say  that  it  will  become  in 
the  present  state  of  society  as  fertile  as  trade,  or  even  as 
the  learned  professions  ;  but  we  do  say  that  besides  its 
peculiar  harvests  in  the  way  of  reputation  and  of  influ 
ence  on  the  great  contemporary  and  prospective  move 
ments  of  thought,  it  holds  out  the  guerdon  of  a  reason 
able  pecuniary  success,  and  of  social  compensations 
that  ought  to  satisfy  reasonable  desires. 

In  proof  of  this,  we  appeal  to  the  experience  of 
those  writers  among  us  who  have  shown  by  their  works 
a  proper  fitness  for  their  vocation.  They  are  nearly  all 
in  comfortable  positions,  and  many  of  them  are  afflu 
ent.  Mr.  Putnam's  book  contains  an  account  of  some 
twenty  of  them  (announcing  others  that  are  to  follow) — 
and  scarcely  one  of  the  number  can  be  said  to  be  poor. 
Prescott  enjoys  a  princely  income, — a  part  of  it  inherited, 
it  is  true,  but  the  other  part  derived  from  his  books  ; 
the  old  age  of  Irving  is  made  glad  by  more  than  com 
petence,  worthily  won  by  his  pen  ;  Cooper's  novels  en 
abled  him  to  live  generously  during  his  whole  life  ; 
Bancroft  is  indebted  for  his  political  and  social  success 
to  his  merits  as  an  historian  ;  Bryant,  though  not  alto 
gether  by  his  poetry,  yet  by  the  exercise  of  his  literary 
abilities,  for  the  newspaper  is  a  branch  of  literature,  has 


184  American  Authorship. 

been  placed  at  his  ease  ;  while  among  those  not  in 
cluded  in  this  volume,  Willis,  Melville,  Mitchell,  Taylor, 
Stephens,  Curtis,  and  others,  have  reaped  large  rewards 
from  their  publications.  On  the  other  hand,  if  Hawthorne 
and  a  few  others  are  not  yet  at  the  summits  of  fortune, 
they  have  at  least  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  golden  heights. 
These  results  are  the  more  remarkable,  because  in 
this  country  literary  success  is  rendered  doubly  difficult 
by  the  artificial  obstructions  thrown  in  its  way.  The 
American  author  has  to  contend  against  two  rivalries, 
both  formidable — first,  that  of  his  native,  and  second, 
that  of  the  foreign  competitor.  Nay,  he  enters  the  lists 
against  the  latter,  indeed,  under  this  further  disadvan 
tage,  that  while  his  own  works  must  be  paid  for  by  the 
publisher,  those  of  the  foreigner  are  furnished,  like  the 
showman's  wonders,  "free,  gratis,  and  for  nothing/' 
No  sooner  is  a  literary  venture  of  Bulwer,  Thackeray, 
or  Dickens  afloat,  than  a  whole  baracoon  of  "  book- 
aneers,"  as  Hood  called  them,  rushes  forth  to  seize  it  ; 
and  so  long  as  they  are  able  to  do  this,  they  will  not 
spend  money — not  much  of  it  certainly — in  any  more 
regular  trade.  Who  will  buy  domestic  goods  when  he 
can  import  foreign  goods  without  price?  Our  manu 
facturing  friends  of  the  protectionist  school  declaim 
dolorously  against  the  policy  of  government  which  ex 
poses  their  arts  to  the  cheap  competition  of  Europe  ; 
but  what  a  clamor  would  they  raise  if  the  exotic  pro 
ductions,  that  come  into  market  against  their  own, 
were  admitted,  not  merely  duty  free,  but  without  having 
been  subjected  to  an  original  cost !  Yet  this  is  pre 
cisely  the  sorrow  of  the  American  author !  At  great 
expense  himself,  he  works  against  an  antagonism  which 
costs  nothing  ;  for  the  slight  percentage  allowed  to 
foreign  writers  by  our  American  publishers,  for  the 
privilege  of  a  first  copy,  is  hardly  to  be  taken  into  the 


American  AutJiorship.  i85 

account.  His  case,  therefore,  is  even  worse  than  that 
of  the  broomseller  of  the  old  anecdote,  who,  stealing 
his  raw  materials,  wondered  how  his  rival  could  under 
sell  him  ;  until  he  was  told  that  the  cunning  rogue  stole 
his  brooms  ready-made.  Our  publishers  get  their  com 
modities  ready-made,  and  flood  the  market  with  them, 
while  the  poor  American  producer  hawks  and  sings  his 
articles  about  the  streets  in  vain  ! 

But  these  considerations  take  for  granted  the  second 
assumption  of  Mr.  Putnam's  book,  to  which  we  alluded 
in  the  outset,  viz.,  that  we  have  genuine  American  au 
thors.  Is  it  so  ?  We  know  that  a  different  opinion 
obtains,  and  that  foreign  writers  declare,  with  some  de 
gree  of  emphasis,  that,  as  yet,  we  are  mere  imitators, — 
unfledged  provincials, — repeating  the  copies  set  us  in 
the  Old  World,  and  quite  destitute  of  originality,  inde 
pendence,  or  native  force.  It  is  not  three  months 
since  a  callow  Scotch  critic,  speaking  ex  cathedra,  in 
the  North  British  Review,  conceded  to  us  only  three 
poets,  and  those,  as  he  dogmatically  alleged,  mere  ser 
vile  echoes  of  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson.  Other 
writers  before  him  have  repeatedly  and  triumphantly 
asked  for  our  dramatists,  novelists,  essayists,  and  wits  ; 
and  Monsieur  Philarete  Chasles,  in  his  late  self-com 
placent  French  summary  of  American  literary  achieve 
ment,  finds  it  difficult  to  drum  up  more  than  half-a- 
dozen  authors  on  whom  he  is  even  willing  to  bestow  a 
passing  approval.  There  is,  therefore,  considerable 
unanimity  in  the  judgment  against  us  ;  and,  though  the 
London  Times,  in  its  recent  notice  of  the  "  Blithedale 
Romance, "  relaxes  a  little  of  its  accustomed  severity, 
and  warns  contemporary  British  writers  to  bestir  their 
pens,  it  must  be  confessed  that  there  still  exists  abroad 
a  general  incredulity,  if  not  a  lurking  contempt,  in  re- 
pect  to  our  literary  pretensions. 


1 86  American  Authorship. 

We  shall  not  gainsay  the  partial  justice  of  this  sen 
tence,  nor  endeavor  to  hide  the  rags  and  tatters  of 
our  poverty.  We  are  poor  ;  we  are  feeble  ;  we  have 
little  to  show,  compared  with  the  older  nations  ;  but 
is  the  comparison  implied  in  all  this  altogether  fair? 
Ought  as  much  to  be  expected  of  us, — in  our  national 
teens  as  yet, — as  of  others,  with  two  thousand  years 
of  Past  behind  them  ?  What  was  Greece,  during  the 
early  centuries  ;  what  Rome  in  A.  u.  c.  70  ;  what  Eng 
land,  up  to  Elizabeth's  day  ;  or  what  France,  till  the 
Grand  Monarque  ?  The  issue  never  having  been  ac 
curately  stated,  the  discussion  of  it  has  shot  wide  of  the 
mark.  The  real  questions  are,  whether  we  possess  a 
native  literature  at  all, — whether  that  literature,  if  it  ex 
ists,  is  equal  to  what  might  be  justly  asked  of  us  under 
the  peculiar  circumstances  of  our  career, — and  whether, 
such  as  it  is,  it  furnishes  any  adequate  and  generous 
ground  of  hope  for  the  future  ? 

It  would  be  absurd  to  expect  of  us,  in  this  the  seven 
tieth  year  of  an  independent  national  existence,  as  full 
and  rich  a  literary  growth  as  that  of  the  older  nations, — 
absurd,  for  the  reason  that  we  have  had  no  time  to  pro 
duce  it  in,  while  our  intellectual  energies  have  been 
absorbed  in  other  ways.  A  man  who  has  his  fields  to 
clear,  his  house  to  build,  his  shoes  and  clothing  to 
make,  his  ways  of  access  to  his  neighbors  to  open,  and 
above  all,  his  government  and  social  order  to  invent 
and  institute, — in  short,  who  has  to  provide  by  dint  of 
the  severest  toil  for  the  most  immediate  and  pressing 
wants  of  his  existence,  is  not  the  man  who  constructs 
epics,  or  amuses  his  fancy  with  the  invention  of  dramas 
or  tales.  His  epics,  and  dramas,  and  romances  he 
finds  in  his  work.  The  giants  of  the  woods  are  the 
giants  most  formidable  to  him,  and  whose  conquest  is 
more  important  than  any  imagination  might  conjure 


American  Authorship.  187 

from  the  dim  twilight  of  mythology.  He  is  battling 
face  to  face  with  the  frost,  and  hail,  and  mud  jotims 
that  Carlyle  speaks  of;  and  while  the  battle  lasts,  he  has 
as  little  relish  as  he  has  opportunity  for  idle  songs  about 
them.  Let  him  be  deeply  engaged  the  while  in  a  novel 
and  somewhat  momentous  political  experiment,  work 
ing  out  into  practical  and  victorious  solution  a  problem 
in  which  the  destinies  of  half  a  world  are  involved,  and 
the  stern  and  trying  task  laid  upon  him  will  scarcely 
permit  of  his  turning  aside  to  the  gentle  and  capricious 
arts.  If,  therefore,  the  whole  of  his  earlier  life  should 
exhibit  an  absolute  want  of  literary  result,  the  fact  would 
not  argue  against  his  capacity  for  that  kind  of  produc 
tion,  but  simply  that  his  powers  had  been  diverted  into 
other  channels.  But  this  consideration  is  so  obvious 
that  we  need  not  press  it  further. 

Again,  if  in  the  progress  of  wealth  and  leisure,  with 
the  growth  of  intellectual  wants  and  refinements,  we 
should  find  him  prone  to  imitate  the  artistic  efforts  of 
those  who  had  gone  before,  it  would  merely  show  a 
very  common  trait  of  youth.  Nothing  is  more  natural 
than  for  juniors  to  copy  their  seniors.  Even  men  and 
nations,  endowed  with  indisputable  genius,  are  apt,  in 
their  first  crude  endeavors,  to  pursue  the  paths  and  ape 
the  manners  of  their  predecessors,  whose  successes  they 
admire,  and  for  whose  qualities  they  feel  a  kindred  sym 
pathy,  but  the  secrets  of  whose  self-dependence  they 
have  not  yet  learned.  Fearful  at  first  of  the  strength  of 
.their  untried  wings,  though  full  of  impulse  for  flight,  like 
young  birds  they  watch  the  motions  of  their  elders,  until 
in  due  time  they  may  themselves  launch  forth  into  the 
air.  Indeed,  we  remember  years  ago  to  have  read  the 
work  of  some  unrecognized  western  philosopher,  who 
maintained, — with  an  abundance  of  instances  to  con 
firm  his  theory, — that  early  imitation  is  a  characteristic 


1 88  American  Author  skip. 

mark  of  genius,  and  that  the  greatest  of  men  have  begun 
their  careers  by  a  more  or  less  conscious  adoption  of 
some  much-loved  model.  Be  that  as  it  may,  we  know, 
in  respect  to  nations,  how  much  of  the  earlier  art  and 
science  of  Greece  was  derived  from  the  opulent  store 
houses  of  the  East,  though  Greece  became  the  mistress 
of  the  intellectual  world  ;  we  know  how  dependent  the 
Romans  were  upon  Greece,  though  Rome  subsequently 
enriched  mankind  from  her  native  sources  ;  and  we 
know,  too,  what  infusion  of  the  Latin  there  has  been 
into  French  and  English  speech.  May  we  not  infer 
from  these  examples,  then,  that  if  America,  as  she  is 
tauntingly  charged,  has  sucked  too  much  of  her  in 
fantile  instruction  and  culture  from  the  breasts  of  her 
noble  mother,  it  does  not  prove  that  she  is  now  unable 
to  go  alone ;  but  simply  that  she  was  once  young. 
Speaking  the  language  of  England,  was  it  not  inevi 
table  that  we  should  read  the  literature  of  England,  and 
draw  thence  much  of  our  intellectual  nurture  ?  The 
whole  of  the  earlier  literature  of  England  was,  in  one 
sense,  just  as  much  ours  as  it  is  the  modern  Eng 
lishman's.  Up  to  the  time  of  our  revolutionary  separa 
tion,  it  was  the  common  possession  of  the  English 
race  ;  and  the  mere  change  in  our  political  relations 
worked  no  defeat  of  our  claim.  We  have  a  birthright 
of  appeal  to  Chaucer,  Spenser.  Shakspeare,  Milton,  &c., 
as  to  our  ancestors  in  the  direct  line,  just  as  the  younger 
members  of  a  family  call  the  common  progenitor  father, 
though  they  may  not  have  inherited  the  title  and  the 
estates.  They  may  have  quarrelled  with  the  elder 
brother  even,  and  quit  the  paternal  roof,  and  begun 
new  life-methods  for  themselves  in  some  distant  region 
of  the  globe,  but  their  lineage  remains  as  clear  and  in 
disputable  as  that  of  the  first-born  sons. 

Now,  all  this  being  admitted,  the  question  of  Ameri- 


American  Authorship.  189 

can  originality  narrows  itself  down  to  this — whether 
the  stock  has  degenerated  by  crossing  the  ocean,  or  in 
being  exposed  to  the  different  influences  of  new  natural 
and  social  conditions  ?  Do  such  of  us  as  have  devoted 
our  energies  to  literature  give  evidence  of  deterioration 
and  decay  ;  or  is  the  old  vigor  still  in  our  loins  ? 

We  think  that  no  fair  mind  can  hesitate  as  to  the 
answer.  We  believe  that  our  authors  have  at  least  not 
retrograded.  On  the  other  hand,  we  believe  that  they 
are  worthy  scions  of  the  old  stock  ;  and  more  than  that, 
that  under  the  inspiration  of  a  new  order  of  things,  such 
as  exists  in  this  country,  they  have  laid  the  foundations 
of  a  peculiar  literature, — not  yet  copious,  not  yet  com 
parable  for  richness,  depth,  variety,  or  grace  with 
either  of  the  ancient  or  modern  literatures,  but  still  full 
of  native  freshness  and  promise.  Like  a  noble  youth 
rounding  into  manhood,  we  are  wild,  extravagant,  and 
impulsive,  betraying  the  faults  of  want  of  discipline  and 
culture,  but  strong  in  the  consciousness  of  mighty 
powers,  and  bounding  forward  to  a  future  of  glorious 
developments. 

No  !  we  may  not  point  to  bright  galaxies  like  those 
which  shed  lustre  from  other  heavens  ;  we  have  no 
thickly-studded  constellations  and  luminous  groups 
scattered  all  above  us  ;  but  we  do  claim  single  stars 
that  shine  with  an  unborrowed  and  unfading  bril 
liancy.  Few  will  be  disposed  to  deny  that  in  meta 
physics  and  moral  reasoning  Jonathan  Edwards  is  of 
the  same  order  of  men  with  Locke  and  Butler ;  that  in 
experimental  philosophy,  Franklin,  and  in  the  science 
of  navigation,  Bowditch,  are  names  consecrated  by  his 
tory  ;  that  Hamilton,  Jefferson,  and  Madison  rank 
with  the  statesmen  of  any  age  ;  that  the  historians 
Bancroft  and  Prescott  take  their  places  by  the  side  of 
the  best  modern  historians,  whether  we  regard  the  ac- 


190  American  AutJiorsJiip. 

curacy  of  their  research  or  the  perspicuity  and  finish 
of  their  style  ;  that  Cooper,  as  a  novelist,  is  only  inferior 
to  Scott,  to  whom  all  others  are  inferior ;  that  the 
pleasant  essays  of  Irving  fear  no  comparison  with  those 
of  Addison  and  Goldsmith  ;  and  that  poems  of  Bryant 
will  be  read  with  delight  as  long  as  Gray's  Elegy,  or 
Coleridge's  Genevieve,  or  Milton's  Lycidas,  or  Burns' 
songs,  because,  like  those  immortal  productions,  they 
are  perfect  in  their  kind.  When,  moreover,  we  name 
the  only  eloquence  in  our  language  which  approaches 
the  comprehensive  and  masterly  speeches  of  Burke,  we 
recall  that  of  Webster ;  the  artist  of  modern  artists  who 
approaches  nearest  to  Titian  is  Allston  ;  the  liveliest 
magazinist  of  the  day,  not  excepting  Jules  Janin,  is  Wil 
lis  ;  the  woman,  who  has  written  a  book  which  has  had 
a  wider  instant  circulation  than  the  book  of  any  other 
woman,  is  Mrs.  Stowe.  Well,  this  is  not  much  :  it  is 
not  Shakspeare,  Milton,  or  Bacon — it  is  not  Swift, 
Fielding,  Thackeray,  but  it  is  some  proof  of  what  we 
contend  for — that  the  old  Saxon  blood  has  not  turned 
to  water  in  our  veins,  nor  the  old  fire  of  the  heart 
become  a  putrid  phosphor. 

It  is  a  piece  of  unworthy  prejudice  to  pretend  that 
our  leading  writers  are  only  second  editions  of  European 
celebrities.  Cooper  is  no  more  an  imitator  of  Scott 
than  is  Bulwer  or  Dickens :  his  materials  and  his 
methods  of  presenting  them  are  his  own  ;  and  no  man 
not  born  in  America,  in  the  shadow  of  her  primeval 
woods,  under  the  inspirations  of  her  unsettled  pio 
neer,  could  have  written  any  of  the  best  of  his  works. 
Bryant  is  wholly  American,  or  if  he  resembles  Words 
worth  or  Cowper,  it  is  because  he  writes  English  with 
the  deep  meditative  wisdom  of  the  one,  and  the  pensive 
grace  of  the  other  ;  but  neither  Wordsworth  nor  Cowper 
have  written  more  true,  beautiful,  or  indestructible 


American  Authorship.  191 

poems  than  the  Waterfowl  or  the  Prairies.  Whom  does 
Emerson  imitate  ?  Carlyle  !  Why,  with  scarcely  a 
quality  in  common  with  Carlyle,  he  is  just  as  much  the 
superior  of  Carlyle,  in  clearness  and  depth  of  insight, 
as  he  is  in  simplicity  and  melody  of  style.  Has  Mr. 
Dana  a  prototype,  has  Channing,  has  Audubon,  has 
Webster,  has  Hawthorne,  has  Melville,  has  Uncle 
Tom  ? 

There  always  must  be  more  or  less  of  structural  uni 
formity  in  the  literature  of  nations  which  speak  the  same 
language.  Out  of  the  same  deep  heart  of  the  national 
life,  from  which  language  comes,  literature  also  is  born  ; 
and  those  mysterious  indwelling  causes,  and  hardly 
less  mysterious  external  influences,  which  mould  and 
modify  the  one,  must  give  form  and  color  to  the  other. 
It  is  impossible  to  separate  ourselves  wholly  from  the 
features  or  the  predominant  traits  of  our  parents.  Had 
the  earlier  settlers  of  this  country  been  French  or  Ger 
man,  as  they  were  English,  our  subsequent  growth 
would  probably  have  partaken  of  a  French  or  German 
bias.  What  literature  we  might  have  created  would 
have  borne  a  family  likeness  to  Voltarie  or  Goethe,  to 
Victor  Hugo  or  Freligrath,  instead  of  to  Milton  and 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  to  Addison  and  Pope  ;  and  we  should 
in  that  event  have  had  to  struggle  ourselves  clear  of 
German  mysticism  and  French  elegance,  as  we  now 
have  to  make  our  way  out  of  the  heavy  and  melancholy 
gravity  of  John  Bull. 

But  this  resemblance  between  our  own  literature  and 
that  of  England,  springing  from  an  identity  of  race  and 
tongue, — made  especially  apparent  during  the  formative 
and  transitional  stages  of  our  growth, — will  not  prevent 
a  new  self-prompted  development  in  the  maturer  future. 
Already  we  have  cut  ourselves  loose  from  the  leading- 
strings  which  were  inevitable  to  our  childhood, — not  in 


192  American  Authorship. 

our  political  system  only,  but  in  our  manners,  morals, 
and  arts  ;  and,  under  the  various  influences  pouring  in 
upon  us  from  the  vast  accessions  to  our  population 
from  the  Old  World,  our  whole  literary  and  social  char 
acter  is  undergoing  change.  This  is  not  the  place  to 
speak  of  the  social  indications,  but,  as  it  regards  the 
literary,  we  allege  that  our  younger  writers  abound  in  the 
unmistakable  evidences  of  a  new  and  vigorous  direction 
given  to  their  habits  of  feeling  and  thought.  They  are  not 
only  less  English  than  their  predecessors  were  ;  they  are 
not  only  more  universal  in  their  affinities  and  tastes,  the 
consequence  of  wider  sympathies,  and  the  infusion  of 
the  European  element ;  but  they  are  more  entirely  inde 
pendent,  and  self-sustained.  They  have  a  more  decided 
character  of  their  own.  A  certain  ready,  open  impres 
sibility,  which  takes  in  all  the  wonders  of  nature  and  all 
the  excellences  of  art,  and  has  a  quick  feeling  for  every 
variety  of  human  character, — is  the  mark  of  most  of 
them,  accompanied  by  a  fresh,  buoyant,  genial  enthusi 
asm.  Without  losing  the  earnestness  of  their  northern 
origin,  they  have  had  superinduced  upon  it  the  volatile 
and  graceful  vivacity  of  the  south  ;  they  are  more 
external,  sensuous,  impassioned,  but  none  the  less 
intense  and  thoughtful.  The  Saxon  and  the  Celtic 
bloods  unite  in  their  veins,  giving  brilliancy  and  facility 
to  a  foundation  of  endurance  and  power. 

It  is  scarcely  time  for  these  new  combinations  to  show 
themselves  in  full  force — except  in  practical  enterprise, 
where  our  achievements  both  in  grandeur  of  concep 
tion  and  force  of  execution  surpass  all  that  is  recorded 
in  modern  annals  ;  but  in  that  branch  of  literature, 
which  comes  nearest  to  enterprise — in  narratives  of 
travel,  there  are  many  signs  of  departure  from  the 
old  types.  Stephens  in  Central  America,  Melville  in 
the  South  Seas,  Curtis  in  Egypt  and  Syria,  have 


American  Authorship.  193 

marked  out  styles  of  their  .own,  each  differing  from  the 
other,  and  each  differing  from  any  travellers  that  have 
gone  before  them.  They  are  full  of  freshness  and 
broad  sensuous  life, — not  like  the  worn-out  debauchees 
of  Europe  who  travel  to  get  rid  of  themselves  or  to  find 
a  new  sensation,  but  like  marvellously  wise  children, 
capable  of  surprises,  but  accepting  all  novelties  with 
good-humor  ;  indeed,  with  a  certain  rollicking  fun  in 
them,  and  yet  estimating  things  at  their  true  value  with 
unerring  practical  sagacity. 

Among  our  nascent  poets,  too — such  as  Lowell, 
Boker,  Read,  Taylor,  and  Stoddard — we  discern  the 
earnest  of  a  departure  from  old  methods,  and  an  en 
trance  upon  a  new  and  original  career.  They  are 
more  free,  frank,  and  expansive  than  the  modern  British 
poets,  and  superadd  to  the  concentrated  force  and 
strength  of  their  insular  models  a  more  affluent,  'richly 
colored,  and  catholic  view  of  life.  A  luxuriance,  as  of 
some  deep  virgin  soil  shooting  up  into  weedy  extrava 
gance  at  times,  betrays  the  inspiration  of  our  prolific 
nature,  and  reminds  us  of  broad  rivers  and  lakes, 
flowery  prairies,  and  interminable  leafy  woods.  Their 
faults,  mainly,  are  faults  of  excess  and  not  of  defi 
ciency.  They  want  discipline,  but  they  do  not  want 
sensibility  nor  native  vigor.  They  have  the  hale,  ruddy- 
complexioned  look  of  health,  and  above  all,  a  sincere 
fearless  spirit,  which  betokens  the  capacity  for  lusty 
human  growth.  Let  them  be  true  to  the  promises  of 
their  youth,  and  their  manhood  will  ripen  into  luscious 
and  fragrant  fulfilments. 

But  we  cannot  pursue  these  topics  ;  we  have  already 
dwelt  so  long  upon  them,  that  we  have  left  ourselves 
little  space  to  speak  of  the  work  by  which  they  have 
been  suggested.  It  is  confessedly  the  book  of  the 
year.  In  the  elegance  of  its  embellishments  no  less 
9 


194  American  Authorship. 

than  in  the  interest  of  its  contents,  we  know  of  no 
holiday  book  that  can  compare  with  it, — none  at  least 
issued  on  this  side  the  ocean.  Still,  we  have  some 
faults  to  find  with  it :  the  plates  are,  here  and  there, 
hastily  executed ;  and  the  letter-press  of  a  few  of  the 
contributions  is  not  so  sprightly,  anecdotal,  personal  as 
we  should  liked  to  have  found.  It  is  a  prevailing  vice 
of  our  writers  to  be  too  didactic  and  sedate  ;  and  in 
such  a  book,  of  all  others,  heavy  writing  is  out  of 
place.  But  this  criticism  does  not  apply  to  the  whole 
volume,  in  which  there  is  much  admirable  and  viva 
cious  writing  ;  while  the  entertainment  which  it 
furnishes  could  not  well  be  better.  It  introduces  us, 
by  pencil  and  by  pen,  to  the  haunts  of  novelists  and 
poets,  who  are  dear  to  the  hearts  of  some,  and  will  live 
long  in  the  imaginations  of  others.  We  visit  Audubon 
in  his  snug  retreat  on  the  Hudson,  while  his  favorite 
deer  are  stalking  about  us  on  the  grass,  and  his  favorite 
birds  sing  to  us  from  the  trees  ;  we  wander  with  Bryant 
through  his  island  woods,  where  his  heart  has  learned 
its  lessons  of  severe  simplicity,  and  his  imagination 
caught  the  glow  of  its  bright  autumnal  foliage  ;  we  loll 
in  the  sumptuous  study  of  Longfellow,  where  the  old 
panels  suggest  the  memory  of  Washington,  while  the 
poet  sings  us  golden  legends  of  the  Old  and  the  New 
Worlds  ;  we  hold  high  discourse  with  Emerson,  in  the 
shadows  of  his  Concord ian  Mecca,  while  the  weird 
Hawthorne,  himself  a  shade,  flits  through  the  umbrage 
of  the  Old  Manse  ;  the  opulent  library  of  Everett  is 
opened  to  us ;  Lowell,  fresh  from  his  European  harvest, 
conducts  us  about  the  nooks  of  his  paternal  mansion  ; 
Miss  Sedgwick  roams  with  us  amid  the  glorious  hills  of 
Berkshire  ;  Simms  chaperons  us  among  the  wild  bays 
and  pines  of  the  Carolina  plantation  ;  Kennedy  welcomes 
us  to  the  hospitality  of  the  warm  South  ;  the  generous 


American  Authorship.  195 

Cooper  throws  open  his  lordly  Northern  hall  ;  Irving 
tells  quaint  stories  of  the  Western  hunters,  or  of  Spanish 
Dons,  or  of  old  English  cheer,  as  we  sit  beneath  the 
fantastic  gables  of  Wolfert's  Roost ;  and  Dana  strolls 
silently  by  our  side,  along  the  shores  of  the  far-resound 
ing  sea,  where  we  listen  to  the  beat  of  its  mighty  pulses, 
till  some  image  of  its  boundlessness  and  glory  passes 
into  our  souls.  But  there  is  one  Home,  near  that  same 
sea,  in  which  we  loiter  with  pleasure  no  more  ;  for  the 
presiding  genius  has  departed  from  it,  and  we  tread  the 
vacant  lawns,  and  walk  through  the  deserted  halls  of 
Marshfield,  full  of  sad  and  thoughtful  memories  of 
Webster. 


ALISON'S     HISTORIES     OF 
EUROPE.* 

|R.  JOHNSON,  in  one  of  his  ursine  growls,  is 
reported  to  have  expressed  a  very  contemptu 
ous  opinion  of  the  writers  of  History  ;  for,  if 
they  narrate  what  is  false,  said  he,  they  are  not  histo 
rians,  but  liars  ;  and  if  they  narrate  what  is  true,  they 
have  no  field  for  the  display  of  ability,  because,  as  truth 
is  necessarily  one,  it  must  be  told  by  everybody  alike. 

But  this  dilemma  of  the  Leviathan  is  a  superficial 
one,  or  rather  no  dilemma  at  all,  for  the  reason  that  the 
historian  does  not  deal  with  absolute  truth,  with  naked 
or  abstract  propositions  of  logic,  nor  yet  with  mere 
individual  and  disconnected  facts,  but  with  phenomena 
that  may  be  variously  interpreted,  with  complicated  and 
warring  movements,  that  spring  from  violent  passions  in 
the  actors  concerned  in  them,  and  that  excite  similar 
passions  in  the  beholders  of  them  ;  and  with  institu 
tions  and  usages  which  represent  vast  and  irreconcilable 
differences  of  political  and  social  faith.  His  art,  there- 

*  The  History  of  Europe,  from  the  commencement  of  the  French 
Revolution,  in  1789,10  the  Battle  of  Waterloo.  By  Sir  Archibald 
Alison,  Bart. :  8  vols.,  1843. 

The  history  of  Europe,  from  the  fall  of  Napoleon,  in  1815,  to  the 
accession  of  Louis  Napoleon,  in  1852.  By  Sir  Archibald  Alison, 
Bart.  :  Vol.  I,  1852. 

From  Putnam' 's  Monthly,  May,  1853. 


Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe.      197 

fore,  like  that  of  any  other  artist,  consists  in  the  selec 
tion  of  his  topics,  and  in  his  method  of  treatment.  He 
must  have  his  color  and  form,  his  foreground  and  back 
ground,  his  light  and  shade,  and  his  variety  as  well  as 
unity  of  composition.  An  ample  scope  is  thus  afforded 
him  for  the  display  of  any  ability  that  he  may  possess, 
for  the  nicest  judgment,  the  most  profound  and  active 
imagination  and  consummate  skill  ;  and,  so  far  from 
finding  him  either  a  liar  on  one  side,  or  the  utterer  of 
bald  truisms  on  the  other,  we  shall  see  that  his  function 
is  allied  no  less  by  the  powers  of  the  mind  which  it  de 
mands,  than  by  the  dignity  of  its  objects,  to  the  loftiest 
forms  of  intellectual  effort.  The  art  of  the  historian, 
indeed,  is  of  so  high  a  kind,  and  demands  such  rare 
and  various  powers,  such  an  almost  impossible  combi 
nation  of  great  faculties,  that  examples  of  really  suc 
cessful  writers  in  this  department  are  very  few.  We 
find  more  great  architects,  great  sculptors,  great  paint 
ers,  great  musicians,  great  poets,  great  dramatists,  great 
novelists,  great  essayists,  than  we  do  of  great  historians. 
To  be  a  great  historian  requires  some  share  in  the  en 
dowments  of  nearly  all  the  others — some  knowledge  of 
their  specialties,  some  sympathy  in  all  their  aims,  be 
sides  many  aptitudes  peculiar  to  his  own  walk.  A  his 
torian,  certainly,  ought  to  be  familiar  with  the  origin 
and  influence  of  the  plastic  arts,  which  are  so  important 
in  the  development  of  society.  He  should  be  able  to 
feel  and  conceive  with  the  poet,  to  discern  and  dis 
tribute  character  with  the  play-wright,  and  to  tell  a 
story  consecutively  and  interestingly  with  the  novelist. 
Again,  the  historian,  besides  his  descriptions  of  the 
scenes  and  characters  of  the  drama  of  life,  in  which, 
like  the  artist,  he  strives  to  produce  the  best  general 
effects — effects  infinitely  more  true  than  the  most  micro 
scopic  minuteness  of  detail  would  be  without  this  artis- 


198      Alison  s  Histories  of  Eiirope. 

tic  management — is  required  to  refer  these  scenes  and 
characters  to  great  general  principles,  and  to  evolve 
comprehensive  and  permanent  laws  of  development  out 
of  the  kaleidoscope  of  ever-shifting  and  variable  appear 
ances.  He  is,  therefore,  the  philosopher  as  well  as  the 
artist,  and  needs  the  penetration  and  insight  of  the  clear 
est  reason,  in  addition  to  the  finer  qualities  of  the  rheto 
rician  and  the  poet. 

We  have  thought  it  well  to  premise  thus  much,  in 
order  to  show  that  it  is  with  no  low  or  narrow  concep 
tions  of  the  province  of  the  historian  that  we  approach 
a  survey  of  the  labors  of  Mr.  Alison.  He  holds  a 
prominent  place  among  the  historians  of  his  day.  He 
is  a  leading  writer  in  the  leading  journals  of  the  British 
Empire  ;  he  has  put  forth  voluminous  books,  widely 
accepted  as  authorities ;  he  traverses  periods  of  time 
which  are  among  the  most  important  in  the  annals  of 
our  race  ;  he  utters  positive  judgments  on  important 
men  and  important  things  ;  and,  in  short,  he  aspires  to 
the  highest  character  in  the  department  of  literature  to 
which  he  is  devoted.  His  position  and  pretensions, 
then,  entitle  him  to  be  judged  according  to  the  most 
elevated  standards  of  criticism.  In  an  inferior  walk  of 
art,  with  a  more  humble  aim,  or  a  less  ambitious  style 
of  execution,  we  might  dismiss  him  in  few  words,  to 
find  his  level  as  he  could  among  the  multitude  of  au 
thors. 

The  period  which  Mr.  Alison  has  chosen  for  the  sub 
ject  of  his  researches  extends  from  the  time  of  the  first 
French  Revolution  to  the  accession  of  Napoleon  the 
Third,  if  we  must  call  that  adventurer  by  a  dynastic 
name.  It  covers  a  space  of  about  sixty  years — perhaps 
the  most  busy,  brilliant,  and  pregnant  years  that  the 
world  has  ever  known — full  of  grand  events  and  crowded 
by  great  characters — and,  in  many  respects,  an  era  deci- 


Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe.      199 

sive  of  the  destinies  of  mankind  for  a  long  time  to 
come.  Indeed,  we  do  not  suppose  that  any  six  decades 
that  have  fallen  upon  man,  scarcely  excepting  the  most 
glorious  age  of  Greece,  the  epoch  of  the  advent  of 
Christianity,  or  that  of  the  Reformation  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  have  been  more  prolific  of  great  men,  more 
agitated  by  great  thoughts,  more  splendid  in  great  dis 
coveries,  or  more  marked  by  signal  and  tremendous 
changes  in  the  condition  of  society,  than  the  sixty  years 
embraced  in  the  design  of  Mr.  Alison's  volumes. 

The  period  begins,  as  we  have  said,  with  the  first 
French  Revolution,  which,  strictly  speaking,  was  the 
end  of  the  previous,  rather  than  the  beginning  of  the 
present  age  ;  or,  more  strictly  still,  it  was  the  transition 
between  the  two,  "  the  Phenix  birth  and  fire  consumma 
tion,"  in  which  an  old  economy  passed  away  and  a  new 
one  sprang  from  its  ashes.  It  was  confessedly  one  of 
the  most  stupendous  events  in  the  history  of  our  race. 
Huge,  astounding,  uproarious,  memorable  to  all  men, 
and  to  the  end  of  time,  alike  in  the  causes  which  led 
to  it,  in  the  unparalleled  scenes  that  attended  its  prog 
ress,  and  in  its  far-reaching  consequences,  no  event 
in  the  annals  of  mankind  is  fuller  of  an  absorbing  in 
terest.  Covering  in  its  duration  only  a  few  rapid  years, 
confined  for  the  most  part  to  a  single  city  and  its  adja 
cent  provinces,  costing,  amid  all  its  terrors,  less  blood 
shed  than  often  marks  a  single  pitched  battle — it  still 
stands  apart,  from  all  other  occurrences,  as  one  of  the 
grandest  and  fearfulest  products  of  any  age. 

Timid  and  unreflecting  minds  are  accustomed  to 
consider  the  French  Revolution  as  a  mere  wanton 
explosion  and  whirlwind  of  frantic  passions,  and  to  stig 
matize  the  chief  actors  in  it  as  fiends  ; — a  holiday  of 
malignant  merriment  to  which  all  the  devils  of  the  earth 
rushed  as  the  witches  rushed  to  the  mad  midnight 


2OO      Alison  s.  Histories  of  Europe. 

revels  of  the  Blochsberg.  Other  minds,  which  strive  to 
pierce  deeper  into  things,  which  believe  that  no  effect 
exists  without  a  cause,  and  a  justifying  cause,  which 
cannot  suppose  that  God  ever  abandons  a  whole  people 
to  sheer  imbecility  and  madness,  or  that  he  has  no 
deeper  design  in  allowing  the  errors  and  crimes  of  men 
than  that  they  may  serve  as  a  bugaboo,  or  death's-head 
and  cross-bones  for  conservative  moralists — find  in  the 
excesses  and  riots  of  this  wonderful  event  another  sig 
nificance,  however  terrible.  They  discern  a  law  of 
Providence  amid  its  sad  dislocations  and  irregularities, 
a  rhythmic  order  in  its  wild  Bacchic  dances,  a  spark  of 
genuine  fire  through  its  meteor  lights,  a  noble  and 
great  thought  in  even  its  most  monstrous  utterances. 
It  is  this  thought,  and  not  alone  the  carnage,  which  has 
been  greatly  exaggerated,  nor  the  ferocity  which  is  more 
or  less  incident  to  all  civil  wars,  nor  the  sudden  over 
throw  of  a  dynasty,  of  which  we  before  have  had  many 
examples,  that  fastens  our  attention  to  the  external 
events  as  it  was  never  before  fastened. 

For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  man  had  the 
conviction  of  the  divine  rights  of  men,  as  opposed  to 
the  pretensions  of  governments,  institutions,  and  society 
itself,  taken  possession  of  the  hearts  of  a  whole  people, 
to  be  proclaimed  as  a  vital  and  inextinguishable  fact. 
Revolutions  there  had  been  before,  but  none  so  deep, 
thorough,  and  radical  as  this — none  which  penetrated 
so  directly  into  the  very  core  of  the  relations  of  the 
individual  to  the  State.  The  contests  in  England, 
during  the  reign  of  James  the  First,  and  the  earlier 
years  of  that  of  his  successor,  were  parliamentary  con 
tests,  carried  on  mainly  by  learned  lawyers,  and  ending 
only  in  a  change  of  reign.  The  Revolution  of  1688, 
conducted  by  the  appointed  organs  of  the  corporations, 
the  landed  aristocracy,  the  town  magistrates,  and  borough 


Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe.      201 

proprietors,  scarcely  touched  the  frame  of  the  govern 
ment,  and  did  not  ask,  as  it  had  no  need,  of  popular 
interference.  Again,  the  American  Revolution  was  at 
first  but  a  strife  between  revolted  colonies  and  an  impe 
rious  mother  country,  and  only  in  the  minds  of  its  more 
exalted  spirits  looked  to  that  final  and  broad  assertion 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  people  which  it  afterward 
uttered.  It  was,  even  in  the  end,  a  conflict  of  State 
with  State.  But  the  French  Revolution,  prepared  from 
afar  by  the  whole  course  of  European  thought  and 
experience,  was  a  solemn  and  unqualified  proclamation 
of  the  rights  of  man  as  man  ;  the  protest  of  the  indi 
vidual  against  every  form  of  domination,  whether  it 
pretended  to  be  human  or  divine. 

It  was  a  matter  of  course,  that  an  assertion  so  extreme, 
provoking  every  conservative  resentment,  and  arousing 
every  aspiring  passion,  should  issue  in  actions  equally 
extreme.  The  mean  and  petty  squabbles  of  cabinets, 
the  windy  debates  of  politicians  and  quidnuncs,  were  no 
longer  in  place.  The  questions  which  had  come  to  be 
debated  involved  the  very  foundations  of  government, 
the  very  basis  of  Society.  How  could  they  be  debated 
with  the  cold  and  formal  logic  of  the  schools  ?  The 
people,  stung  to  an  intense  sense  of  wrong,  by  the 
injustice  and  licentiousness  with  which  for  ages  they  had 
been  governed,  had  rushed  together,  not  to  listen  and 
deliberate,  but  to  act.  Twenty-four  millions  of  them, 
courageously  casting  off  the  trammels  of  centuries, 
dislodging  temporal  and  spiritual  tyranny  from  its 
strongholds,  elevating  the  multitudes  from  servile  and 
superstitious  submission,  and  assuming  the  control  of 
their  own  destiny,  presented  a  spectacle,  which,  in  the 
midst  of  its  bloodshed  and  atrocity,  is  too  original  and 
magnificent  not  to  be  admired,  even  while  we  tremble. 
We  may  condemn  and  denounce  those  millions  as  we 
9* 


2O2       Alison  s  Histories  of  E2irope. 

please  ;  but  they  struck  a  blow  with  which  humanity 
still  vibrates,  and  the  echoes  of  their  wild  screams  will 
go  down  as  jubilant  harmonies  to  the  end  of  time. 

Yet  great  as  the  opening  incident  of  the  age  we  are 
considering  was,  it  scarcely  surpasses  in  interest  the 
national  convulsions  by  which  it  was  followed.  The 
waves  of  the  tumult  had  not  subsided,  when  a  majestic 
figure  appears,  emerging  from  the  ooze  and  slime  of 
the  deluge,  like  Milton's  postdiluvian  lion, 

"pawing  to  get  free 

His  hinder  parts ;   then  springs  as  broke  from  bonds, 
And  rampant  shakes  his  brinded  mane." 

The  year  1799 — the  last  of  the  last  century — saw 
Napoleon  Bonaparte  First  Consul  of  France. 

[Here  followed  an  outline  of  the  events  of  the  ipth 
century,  which,  as  it  has  been  anticipated  substantially 
by  the  foregoing  essay  on  "  The  Last  Half-Century,"  is 
omitted.] 

These,  then,  are  the  characteristics  of  the  period  of 
which  Mr.  Alison  has  made  himself  the  historian — a 
period,  as  we  see  even  in  the  hasty  sketch  we  have  given 
of  it,  of  tremendous  activity  and  expansiveness,  marked 
by  great  events  on  every  side,  not  only  in  politics  and 
war,  but  in  literature,  science,  social  improvement,  and 
in  practical  as  well  as  moral  enterprise.  In  what  man 
ner  has  he  treated  the  rich  materials  placed  in  his 
hand  ? 

Hegel,  one  of  the  profoundest  and  acutest,  as  well  as 
most  brilliant  of  the  Germans,  has  divided  history — by 
which  he  means  history  as  an  art,  and  not  the  course 
of  events — into  primitive,  systematic,  and  philosophical. 
By  primitive  history  he  means  a  simple  narrative  or 
chronicle  of  events,  as  it  might  be  given  by  an  actual 


Alisons  Histories  of  Europe.      203 

witness  of  them,  of  which  sort  we  have  specimens  in 
Herodotus,  Thucydides,  and  Caesar.  Systematic  history 
aspires  to  a  slightly  higher  character,  and  records  the 
life  of  a  nation,  or  of  nations,  according  to  some 
general  scheme  of  thought  in  the  author's  mind,  not 
founded,  however,  upon  any  profound  view  of  the 
logical  order  of  events,  so  much  as  upon  external  rela 
tions  of  time  and  place,  or  the  rhetorical  requirements 
of  the  subject ;  it  is  exemplified  in  Gibbon,  Hume, 
Robertson,  Macaulay,  and  Prescott.  But  philosophical 
history  takes  a  more  connected  and  deeper,  as  well  as 
wider  view  ;  it  looks  upon  human  actions  and  their 
developments  as  illustrations  of  some  principle,  or  at 
least  of  some  universal  tendency,  which  is  the  work  of 
the  Supreme  Reason,  realizing  its  purposes  toward 
humanity.  In  this  style  Vico,  Herder,  Guizot,  Thierry, 
Louis  Blanc,  and,  to  some  extent,  our  own  Bancroft, 
are  examples.  For  a  higher  order  of  history  still,  the 
scientific  order,  which  would  blend  perfect  accuracy  of 
narrative  with  a  deduction  of  absolute  scientific  prin 
ciples,  the  time  has  not  come,  for  the  reason  that  the 
science  of  history  is  not  yet  known,  and  cannot  be 
known  except  as  the  crown  and  summit  of  every  other 
science. 

Mr.  Alison  modulates  variously  through  all  the  dif 
ferent  styles,  but  has  attained  a  brilliant  success  in 
none,  and  only  a  mediocre  success  in  either  ;  and,  in 
any  large  view  of  the  historical  function,  must  be  con 
tent  to  take  a  very  humble  place. 

As  a  narrator  of  events,  he  has  the  two  important 
merits — of  patient  and  laborious  industry,  and  of  con 
siderable  animation  and  vigor  of  description.  He 
shrinks  from  no  effort  of  research  in  collecting  his  ma 
terials,  and  he  puts  them  together  with  a  ponderous 
diligence.  His  works,  as  repositories  of  certain  se- 


2O4      Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe. 

lected  facts,  will  save  the  inquirer  a  deal  of  pains  that 
he  would  otherwise  be  at,  in  reading  newspapers,  de 
bates,  bulletins,  memoirs,  and  letters.  He  depicts 
occasional  scenes,  too,  especially  the  movements  of 
battle,  in  strong  and  vivid  colors.  But  the  ordinary 
current  of  his  narrative  betrays  constantly  the  want  of 
every  quality  necessary  to  a  skilful  or  an  interesting 
story-teller.  His  vocabulary,  in  the  first  place,  is  re 
markably  deficient ;  he  cannot  handle  words,  the  ele 
mentary  tools  of  his  art,  with  any  facility  or  power  ;  and 
his  diction,  in  the  second  place,  is  equally  poverty- 
stricken.  His  sentences  are  often  heavy,  confused, 
straggling,  and  ill-joined  ;  he  commits  blunders  in 
grammar  that  a  child  would  be  punished  for  at  school  ; 
and  being  utterly  destitute  of  fancy  and  imagination, 
his  metaphors  are  the  stereotyped  phrases  of  literary 
commerce  or  the  commonplaces  of  the  street.  We  are 
reminded  of  the  "Alexander  and  Clytus"  illustration 
of  Coleridge's  school  friends  in  almost  every  page  of 
Alison,  by  the  recurrence,  usque  ad  nauseam,  of  the  same 
similes  and  comparisons.  What  is  worse,  his  figures, 
hackneyed  as  they  are,  seldom  run  upon  all-fours  ;  they 
are  both  halt  and  blind,  and,  like  the  monsters  in 
Horace's  Art  of  Poetry,  have  joined  a  horse's  neck  to  a 
human  head,  or  spread  the  plumage  of  birds  over  the 
limbs  of  beasts. 

As  proofs  of  these  defects  we  refer  to  expressions 
such  as  these  :  "the  vast  and' varied  inhabitants"  of  the 
French  empire,  as  if  Frenchmen  were  vaster  than  any 
other  people;  "  an  acquisition  which  speedily  recoiled 
upon  the  heads  of  those  who  acquired  them  ;"  "  Murat, 
who  made  1800  of  their  wearied  columns  prisoners," 
which  would  have  been  more  prisoners  than  the  whole 
Austrian  army  contained  of  men.  We  are  told  of  a 
narrative  "tinged  with  undue  bias  ;"  and  of  a  historical 


Alison  s  Histories  of  Eiirope.      2o5 

work  "closing  with  a  ray  of  glory."  Of  a  certain  event 
it  is  said,  "  it  could  hardly  have  been  anticipated  that  it 
would  have  been  attended  by  effects,"  etc.,  with  innumer 
able  other  similar  carelessnesses.  In  respect  to  sen 
tences,  take  this:  "In  1789,  Goethe,  profound  and 
imaginative,  was  reflecting  on  the  destiny  of  man  on 
earth,  like  a  cloud  which  turns  up  its  silver  lining  to  the 
moon  /'  or  this  astronomical  glorification  of  the  age  of 
George  III.,  "  Bright  as  were  the  stars  of  its  morning- 
light,  more  brilliant  still  was  the  constellation  which 
shone  forth  at  its  meridian  splendor,  or  cast  a  glow 
over  the  twilight  of  its  evening  shades/'  which  is  neither 
poetry  nor  science.  Again,  he  says,  speaking  of  mod 
ern  enterprise  and  emigration,  which  he  capriciously 
calls  the  second  dispersion  of  mankind  :  "No  such 
powerful  causes,  producing  the  dispersion  of  the  species, 
have  come  into  operation  since  mankind  were  originally 
separated  on  the  Assyrian  plains  ;  and  it  took  place'" — 
what  took  place? — "from  an  attempt  springing  from 
the  pride  and  ambition  of  man,  as  vain  as  the  building 
of  the  tower  of  Babel."  The  first  three  sentences  of 
the  Preface  to  his  New  Series  read  thus  :  "During  a 
period  of  peace,  the  eras  of  history  cannot  be  so  clearly 
perceived,  on  a  first  and  superficial  glance,  as  when 
they  are  marked  by  the  decisive  events  of  war  ;  but  they 
are  not  on  that  account  the  less  obvious  when  their  re 
spective  limits  have  been  once  ascertained.  The  tri 
umphs  of  parties  in  the  Senate-house  or  Forum  are 
not,  in  general,  followed  by  the  same  immediate  and 
decisive  results  as  those  of  armies  in  the  field  ;  *  *  * 
but  they  are  equally  real  and  decisive."  The  triple  duty 
imposed  upon  decisive  in  these  three  sentences  is  one 
that  Mr.  Alison  very  often  exacts  of  his  sorry  and  jaded 
vocables. 

Because  these  secondary  defects  are  so  habitual  with 


206      Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe. 

him,  marring  his  most  studied  and  elaborate  passages, 
we  speak  of  them  at  length  ;  but  they  should  not  be 
allowed  to  detain  us  from  the  consideration  of  those 
more  grievous  faults  which  mark  his  works  as  a  sys 
tematic  historian,  or  one  who  writes  according  to  an 
avowed  scheme.  Mr.  Alison's  arrangement  compre 
hends  the  history  of  Europe  from  1789  to  1852:  the 
first  part,  already  published,  closed  in  1815  ;  and  the 
second  part,  of  which  the  first  volume  only  is  issued,  is 
intended  to  carry  on  the  narrative  to  our  own  day. 
Now,  what  will  be  the  surprise  of  the  reader  to  learn 
that,  in  the  proposed  systematic  view  of  Europe,  there 
is  scarcely  more  than  a  reference  to  those  great  move 
ments  of  thought,  to  those  grand  discoveries  in  science, 
to  those  magnificent  moral  enterprises,  of  which  we 
have  spoken  in  the  outset  of  this  article,  as  so  charac 
teristic  of  the  period  ?  The  whole  ten  volumes  of  his 
first  series  are  exclusively  occupied  with  the  French 
Revolution  and  the  wars  that  grew  out  of  it,  while  "  the 
literature,  the  manners,  the  arts,  and  the  social  changes," 
which  he  admits  are  far  more  permanently  interesting 
and  important  than  the  doings  of  statesmen  in  general, 
are  quite  omitted  ! 

A  critic  has  well  objected  to  Niebuhr's  great  History 
of  Rome,  that  he  exhausts  his  efforts  in  clearing  up 
and  rendering  intelligible  the  merely  civic  life  of  the 
Roman  people,  while  he  tells  us  little  or  nothing  of  the 
people  themselves,  of  their  ideas  and  feelings,  of  their 
religion,  morality,  and  domestic  relations,  of  their 
women  as  well  as  their  men,  of  their  children  and  their 
education,  and  of  their  slaves  and  the  treatment  of  slaves 
"The  central  idea  of  the  Roman  religion  and  polity," 
he  says,  "the  family,  scarcely  shows  itself  in  his  vo 
luminous  works,  except  in  connection  with  the  classi 
fication  of  the  citizens  ;  nor  are  we  made  to  perceive  in 


Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe.      207 

what  the  beliefs  and  modes  of  conduct  of  the  Romans, 
respecting  things  in  general,  agreed,  and  in  what  dis 
agreed,  with  those  of  the  rest  of  the  ancient  world.  Yet 
the  mysteries  of  the  Romans  and  their  fortunes  must  be 
there."  But  with  how  much  more  pertinence  and  force 
may  we  apply  similar  objections  to  the  oversights  of 
Alison,  who  speaks  of  wars,  and  battles,  and  intrigues, 
as  if  Europe,  for  the  last  half-century,  had  done  nothing 
but  fight.  Were  all  Europeans  ministers,  or  generals, 
or  diplomats,  or  monarchs,  that  no  other  characters  are 
permitted  to  figure  on  the  scene  ?  Were  there  no  other 
movements  but  those  of  armies,  no  words  uttered  but 
those  of  protocols,  no  letters  written  but  the  cipher  of 
secret  agents,  or  the  despatches  of  commissaries  ?  Had 
not  those  thirty  millions  of  Frenchmen,  and  those 
other  millions  of  Germans,  Spaniards,  Italians,  Rus 
sians,  English,  etc.,  like  Shylock,  "eyes,  organs, 
senses,  affections,  passions  ?"  or  had  they  only  hands  to 
handle  swords,  and  bodies  to  be  riddled  by  balls  ? 
Left  to  Mr.  Alison's  accounts  alone  for  our  sources 
of  information,  we  should  be  compelled  to  give  a 
most  abhorrent  answer  to  these  questions,  and  to  sup 
pose  that  Christendom,  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  had 
been  surrendered  to  Milton's  apostate  angels,  who 
"  only  in  destruction  took  delight."  His  pages  remind 
us  of  the  Salon  des  Batailles,  at  Versailles,  where  every 
picture  is  some  grand  state  ceremonial,  or  a  battle- 
piece,  covered  with  charging  troops,  and  the  carcases 
of  the  slain,  with  noisy  trumpeters  in  the  foreground, 
and  vast  masses  of  lurid  smoke  blotting  out  the  green 
earth  and  the  skies.  We  are  not  unaware,  as  we  trust 
we  have  shown,  of  the  surpassing  greatness  of  the  ex 
ternal  events  of  which  his  history  is  composed,  nor  do 
we  complain  of  the  minute  and  laborious  zeal  with 
which  he  has  gathered  every  particular  concerning 


208       Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe. 

them,  ransacking  archives  and  measuring  fields  of 
slaughter ;  but  we  do  complain  that  he  has  allowed  the 
tumult  and  dust  of  these  vast  contests  to  stop  his  ears 
and  blind  his  eyes  to  every  object  but  themselves. 

Mr.  Alison  acknowledges  this  serious  deficiency  in 
the  Preface  to  his  Second  Series,  and  attempts  to  supply 
it  by  a  promise  to  present  "subjects  of  study  more  gen 
erally  interesting  than  the  weightier  matters  of  social 
and  political  change,"  and  he  gives  a  chapter  of  the 
literary  history  of  England  in  the  body  of  the  work,  by 
way  of  specimen.  The  reparation  comes  too  late  ;  for 
we  cannot  see  with  what  propriety  he  begins  in  1815 
an  exposition  that  ought  to  have  commenced  in  1789, 
or  how  he  can  be  so  weak  as  to  suppose  that  desultory 
sketches  of  certain  prominent  writers  and  discoverers 
is  a  history  of  Arts,  Manners,  Literature,  and  Society. 
These  have  as  much  a  connected  life,  interdependent 
relations,  and  an  order  of  development,  as  the  "weigh 
tier  matters  of  social  and  political  change, "  and,  in  any 
consistent  historical  survey,  ought  to  be  treated  with  the 
same  abounding  completeness  and  accuracy.  A  few 
scraps  of  commonplace  criticism,  —  such  as  one  reads  in 
the  book-notices  of  Ladies'  Magazines,  or  in  the  essays 
of  young  collegians,  scraps  loosely  strung  together  by 
mere  contemporaneousness  or  sequence  of  time,  and 
as  if  their  subjects  had  no  relation,  either  to  the  spirit 
of  the  age  or  to  the  condition  and  movements  of  so 
ciety, — cannot  be  called  history,  even  in  the  lowest  sense 
of  the  term  ;  much  less  can  they  be  called  systematic 
history.  Yet  it  is  precisely  such  scraps  that  he  has  set 
before  us  in  the  chapter  entitled  "The  Progress  of  Lit 
erature,  Science,  the  Arts  and  Manners,  in  Great  Britain 
after  the  Peace," — a  chapter  designed  to  shadow  forth 
his  intentions  as  to  the  future  treatment  of  the  Litera 
ture,  Art,  etc.,  of  the  rest  of  Europe, 


Alisons  Histories  of  Europe.      209 

After  a  brief  reference  to  the  rapid  growth  of  steam 
navigation  and  of  cotton  manufactures,  and  to  the  im 
pulse  given   to  intellectual    activity  by  great   wars,   he 
sketches    the    literary    or   artistic    characters   of    Scott, 
Byron,  Rogers,  Southey,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Paley, 
Malthus,  Herschel,   and   others,  down  to  Miss  O'Neil 
and  Helen  Faucett.     We  say  he  sketches  them,  and  yet 
a  meagre  term  like  that  can   hardly  be  applied  to  the 
wretched  chalk -and-water  outlines  he  parades  as   pic 
tures.      Not  to  remark  upon  the  singular  anachronism 
which  permits  him  to  speak  of  many  of  his  personages, 
such   as  Paley,   Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,   Scott,  Crabbe, 
Dugald  Stewart,  Davy,   Kemble,    Herschel,  etc.,  as  at 
taining  their  chief  celebrity  "after  the  Peace "  instead 
of  before  it ;    nor    upon  the   still  more  singular  over 
sight,   of  omitting  Shelley  and  Keats  from  his  list  of 
poets,  Faraday  from  that  of  philosophers,  Godwin  from 
the  novelists,  De  Quincey  and  Leigh   Hunt   from   the 
critics,  and  Sheridan  Knowles  from  the  dramatists  ;  we 
must  say  that  his  characterizations  of  the  men  he  names 
are  the  most  puerile,  vague,  and  unsatisfactory  that  we 
ever   read    in    a  book  of  any  pretention.      As  to    any 
distinct  or  discriminating  description  of  the  peculiari 
ties  of  these  worthies,  there  is  none  whatever  ;  "charm 
ing,"    "delightful,"    "fine,"    "brilliant,"    "graphic," 
"interesting,"  are  the  epithets  that  exhaust  his  thesau 
rus  of    praise  ;   and   these   are  applied  equally  to  all, 
with  a  slight  change  of  posture,  in  each  case,  but  with 
out  a   particle    of  insight  in  either.     Take  Tennyson, 
whose  merits  and  defects  as  a  poet  are  alike  obvious,  as 
an   example  of  Mr.  Alison's  method  of  estimating  lit 
erary  character.      "Tennyson,"  he  says,   "has  opened 
a   new   vein    in    English  poetry,   and   shown  that  real 
genius,   even  in  the  most   advanced  stages   of  society, 
can  strike  a  fresh  chord,  and,  departing  from  the  hack- 


2io      Alisons  Histories  of  Europe. 

neyed  way  of  imitation,  charm  -the  world  by  the  con 
ceptions  of  original  thought.  His  imagination,  wide 
and  discursive  as  the  dreams  of  fancy  (sic),  wanders  at 
will,  not  over  the  real  so  much  as  the  ideal  world.  The 
grottoes  of  the  sea,  the  caves  of  the  mermaid,  the  realms 
of  heaven,  are  alternately  the  scenes  of  his  song.  His 
versification,  wild  as  the  song  of  the  elfin  king,  is 
broken  and  irregular,  but  often  inexpressibly  charming. 
Sometimes,  however,  this  tendency  (what  tendency?) 
leads  him  into  conceit ;  in  the  endeavor  to  be  original, 
he  becomes  fantastic  ;  there  is  a  freshness  and  origi 
nality,  however,  about  his  conceptions,  which  contrast 
strangely  with  the  practical  and  interested  views  which 
influenced  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  and  contributed 
not  a  little  to  their  deserved  success.  They  were  felt  to 
be  the  more  charming,  because  they  were  so  much  at 
variance  with  the  prevailing  ideas  around  him,  and  re 
opened  those  fountains  of  romance  which  nature  had 
planted  in  every  bosom,  but  which  are  so  often  closed 
by  the  cares,  the  anxieties,  and  the  rivalry  of  the 
world." 

Now  this  mass  of  stuff,  this  feebleness,  nonsense,  and 
mixed  metaphor,  might  have  been  written,  if  any  one 
but  Mr.  Alison  could  have  written  it,  about  any  poet 
that  has  flourished  since  Pope,  and  would  have  given  a 
reader  ignorant  of  him  just  as  clear  an  idea  of  his  quali 
ties  as  it  does  of  those  of  Mr.  Tennyson.  That  is,  it 
would  have  given  him  just  no  idea  at  all.  Tennyson's 
subtle  insight,  intellectual  intensity,  refined  spiritual 
fancy,  elaborate  sculptural  art,  and  pervading  melody, 
or  any  other  traits  that  separate  him  from  the  rest  of  his 
tribe,  are  terra  incognita  to  the  "great  historian,"  who 
seems,  also,  quite  as  impartially  innocent  of  any  real 
knowledge  of  the  other  two  or  three  score  of  personages 
whom  he  attempts  to  delineate. 


Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe.      2 1 1 

In  this  literary  patchwork,  Mr.  Alison  revels  in 
his  fondness  for  repetitions.  We  read,  not  without 
amusement,  of  Scott's  "wide-spread  reputation,"  By 
ron's  "  most  wide-spread  reputation  in  the  world,"  the 
''wide-spread  interest  of  Moore's  lines,"  Campbell's 
"wide-spread  fame,"  Dickens's  "wide-spread  reputa 
tion," — phrases  that  recur  on  every  second  page — on 
the  very  page,  indeed,  in  which  we  are  reminded,  truly 
enough,  that  "repetition  and  monotony  are  the  bane  of 
literature  and  imagination."  We  are  informed  besides, 
on  one  page,  that  Moore  is  "the  greatest  lyric  poet  in 
the  English  language  ;"  on  the  next,  that  Campbell  is 
"the  greatest  lyric  poet  of  England,"  and  in  a  third, 
that  Gray  "has  made  the  most  popular  poem  in  the 
English  language."  Again,  Joanna  Baillie's  dramas  are 
said  to  be  written  "in  sonorous  Alexandrine  verses," 
which  is  a  new  measure  for  dramas,  and  Mrs.  Hemans 
is  called  "a  rival  to  Coleridge,  if  not  in  depth  of 
thought,  in  tenderness  of  feeling  and  beauty  of  expres 
sion."  "  Lalla  Rookh"  is  made  to  ''clothe  oriental  im 
ages  and  adventures  with  the  genius  and  refinement  of 
the  Western  world  ;"  and  Alison,  who  wrote  the  most 
jejune  of  books  on  Taste,  is  said  to  have  been  "in 
spired  by  a  genuine  taste  for  the  sublime  and  beautiful." 
Macaulay  is  spoken  of  as  one  whose  "imagination  often 
snatches  the  reins  from  his  reason,"  whose  "ardor  dims 
his  equanimity,"  whose  "views,  always  ingenious,  are 
not  uniformly  just,"  whose  "powers  as  a  rhetorician 
make  him  forget  his  duties  as  a  judge,'7  who  is  "  splen 
did  rather  than  impartial  ;"  while  in  the  same  passage 
we  are  told  that  "his  fascinating  volumes"  cause  us 
"to  regret  that  the  first  pleader  at  the  bar  of  posterity 
has  not  yet  been  raised  to  the  bench."  Fine  qualities 
those  for  a  judge  ! 

Nor  are  we  less  amused  in  hearing  that  Wilson,  the 


2 1 2      Alison  s  PI i stories  of  Europe. 

truculent  editor  of  Blackwood,  "  wields  his  aerial  flights 
through  the  heavens,  without  alighting,  or  caring  for 
the  concerns  of  the  lower  world" — i.  e.,  Wilson  of  the 
Nodes ;  and  whose  criticisms,  "if  they  have  any  imper 
fections,  it  is  that  they  are  too  indulgent" — i.  e.,  Wilson 
of  the  Chaldee  MS.  Mitford's  dull  and  bigoted  his 
tory  of  Greece,  as  we  learn,  "combines  the  interest  of 
the  romance  of  Quintius  Curtius,  with  the  authenticity 
and  accuracy  of  Arrian. "  Thackeray,  the  greatest  satirist 
of  England,  since  the  days  of  Swift,  is  dismissed  as  a 
writer  of  Mr.  Dickens's  school — i.  e.,  the  school  which 
"aimed  at  the  representation  of  the  manners,  customs, 
ideas,  and  habits  of  middle  and  low  life," — "  distin 
guished  by  great  talents  and  graphic  powers,"  but  not 
"  destined  to  be  durable, "  because  "imagination  is  a 
winged  deity,  whose  flight,  to  be  commanding,  must 
ever  be  upward  ;"  and  because,  further,  "ridicule  is  val 
ued  only  by  those  who  know  the  persons  ridiculed." 
We  might  fill  a  volume  with  such  crude  and  preposter 
ous  judgments,  if  we  had  space  to  waste  in  copying 
them — judgments  formed  without  principles,  and  ex 
pressed  in  the  loose  language  of  the  newspapers. 

Of  criticism  as  an  art — an  art  which  treats  the  great 
products  of  literature  and  science,  as  the  vital  out 
growth  of  genius,  having  their  deep  inward  laws  of 
being,  and  related  to  the  age  in  which  they  were  pro 
duced,  by  the  profoundest  ties  and  influences — Mr. 
Alison  appears  to  have  no  more  conception  than  a  com 
mon  house-painter  has  of  chiaro  oscuro.  When  he  has 
given  the  title  of  a  writer's  principal  works,  adduced  a 
few  facts  of  his  external  life,  pronounced  him  charming, 
widely  celebrated,  and  enduringly  known,  or  a  man  of 
sane  moral  convictions,  he  fancies  that  he  has  written 
the  history  of  that  writer.  Of  his  individuality,  as  dis 
tinguished  from  other  writers,  from  what  stand-point  he 


Alisons  Histories  of  Europe.     -213 

looked  on  life  and  nature,  and  interpreted  their  lessons, 
or  of  his  relations  to  great  contemporaneous  develop 
ments  in  his  own  sphere,  as  well  as  in  other  spheres, 
we  are  taught  literally  nothing.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  as  a 
novelist,  for  instance,  was  an  altogether  peculiar  and  sig 
nificant  phenomenon,  making  its  appearance  in  the 
midst  of  English  literature,  to  revive  the  images  of 
feudal  life,  at  a  time  when  the  whole  current  of  the  world 
was  agitated,  and  rushing  on  to  an  unknown  future. 
What  did  he  express,  what  were  his  uses,  what  his  value 
to  the  age  ?  Can  a  thoughtful  mind  consider  him,  with 
out  asking  questions  such  as  these  ?  Has  he  any  real 
interest  to  us,  as  a  fact  of  history,  except  in  his  relations 
to  the  general  course  of  literature,  and  to  the  general 
life  of  society  ?  Yet  Mr.  Alison  is  satisfied  with  a  few 
personal  details,  and  a  very  vague  talk  about  his 
"brilliancy  of  fancy,"  his  "poetic  conceptions,"  his 
"great  and  varied  powers,"  and  that  poetic  tempera 
ment  which  "threw  over  the  pictures  of  memory  the 
radiance  of  the  imagination  ;"  adding,  as  a  proof,  both 
of  Scott's  morality  and  immortality,  in  true  Alisonian 
style,  that  "  nothing  ever  permanently  floated  down  the 
stream  of  time  but  what  was  buoyant  from  its  elevating 
tendency  !" 

Coleridge  was  no  less  than  Scott  a  notable  man,  not 
in  himself  merely,  but  in  the  important  influence  which 
he  exercised  upon  the  poetic  taste  of  his  generation, 
and  the  new  era  which  he  may  be  said  to  have  created 
in  the  speculative  tendencies  of  the  English  mind. 
More  than  any  man  of  his  age,  therefore,  he  deserves 
at  the  hands  of  the  historian  a  rigid  analysis  of  his 
splendid  powers,  and  a  careful  estimate  of  his  bearing 
upon  contemporary  thought.  At  the  least,  he  should 
have  been  described  as  something  more  than  a  con 
siderable  poet,  and  an  excellent  translator,  "with  a 


214      AH  sorts  Histories  of  Europe. 

strongly  metaphysical  turn  of  mind,"  less  "abstract 
and  philosophical,"  though  "more  pictorial  and 
dramatic"  than  Wordsworth,  and  not  destined  to  "  last 
ing  celebrity,"  because  his  "ideas  and  images  are  too 
abstract."  How  is  it  possible  that  any  one  could  have 
lived  in  Coleridge's  own  time,  and  perhaps  read  his 
masterly  essays,  and  yet  describe  him  in  this  asinine 
way  ? 

Our  readers  may,  perhaps,  object  that  it  is  too  much 
to  expect  of  Alison  any  philosophical  view,  either  of 
men  or  things  ;  and  we  should  admit  the  force  of  the 
objection  if  he  were  not  constantly  thrusting  reflections, 
meant  to  be  philosophical,  into  the  course  of  his  narra 
tive.  Not  content  with  his  verbose  details  of  incidents, 
and  his  attempted  portraitures  of  character,  he  deals 
sweeping  judgments  "round  the  land,"  uttering  them 
with  the  most  positive  confidence,  and  claiming  for 
them  at  times  the  authority  of  Heaven.  One  feels 
bound,  consequently,  to  look  a  little  into  his  right  to 
assume  this  lofty  judicial  attitude,  and  to  ask  on  what 
principles  he  arrives  at  these  elaborate  philosophical 
deductions. 

It  is  difficult,  we  confess,  to  ascertain  distinctly  what 
his  philosophical  views  are  ;  but  as  near  as  we  can 
gather  them  from  the  maxims  and  theories  he  is  fond 
of  sporting,  they  amount  to  this  :  that  man  is  universally 
corrupt,  destitute  alike  of  the  goodness  which  should 
lead  him  into  the  right  path,  and  of  the  intellect  that 
enables  him  to  discern  it  ;  and  as  an  inevitable  result, 
running  perpetually  into  errors,  from  which  he  is  alone 
saved  by  an  inscrutable  Providence.  Thus,  when  a 
French  Revolution  comes,  in  a  sudden  access  of  frenzy, 
to  spread  its  Jacobinical  wickedness  over  the  continent, 
a  sober  and  constitutional  England  is  raised  up  to  stay 
the  deluge  ;  when  a  wicked  Mr.  Peel  contracts  the 


Alisons  Histories  of  Eiirope.      2i5 

currency  or  establishes  free  trade,  to  the  infinite  damage 
of  the  landed  aristocracy,  Providence  opens  the  way  to 
California,  to  supply  the  precious  metals  and  give  an 
impulse  to  emigration  ;  and  so  on  every  occasion  when 
the  iniquity  and  short-sightedness  of  mortals  get  them 
into  hopeless  straits,  Providence  stands  ready  with  a 
method  of  relief!  We  have  as  much  faith  in  Providence 
as  Mr.  Alison  has,  but  we  believe  that  it  works  through 
human  agency  and  according  to  a  fixed  and  intelligible 
order,  which  is  no  further  inscrutable  than  we  are  igno 
rant,  and  which  proceeds  in  every  respect  rationally, 
because  it  is  itself  the  Supreme  Reason.  We  cannot 
so  degrade  it  as  to  regard  it  as  a  mere  Jack-at-a-pinch. 
There  was  once  a  class  of  talewrights  and  dramatists  in 
German  literature,  which  somebody  called  the  Need- 
and-Help  School,  because  it  was  their  habit  to  allow 
their  characters  to  fall  into  all  manner  of  dangers  and 
difficulties,  in  order  at  the  critical  moment  to  come  to 
their  aid,  either  by  providing  some  unexpected  rescue, 
or  killing  them  all  off  in  a  heap.  They  very  well  illus 
trate  the  kind  of  Providence  to  which  Mr.  Alison  seems' 
to  commit  the  universe — a  Providence  which  creates  a 
certain  number  of  ninnies  and  villains,  places  them  in 
the  midst  of  the  scenes  in  which  they  are  to  move,  sets 
them  at  work  until  they  are  all  at  loggerheads  and  begin 
to  throttle  the  life  out  of  each  other,  and  then,  at  last, 
interposes  to  make  a  display  of  its  own  adroitness  and 
superiority. 

We  say  this  seems  to  be  his  theory  of  the  course  of 
providential  guidance,  but  he  is  not  always  consistent  in 
his  expositions  of  it.  He  accounts  for  the  French 
Revolution,  in  one  place,  for  example,  by  alleging  that 
it  was  a  part  of  "the  universal  frenzy  which  at  times 
seizes  mankind  from  causes  inscrutable  to  human  wis 
dom  ;"  and  yet,  in  another  place,  he  assigns  a  dozen 


216      Alisons  Histories  of  Europe. 

natural  causes,  such  as  the  oppressions  of  the  previous 
reigns,  for  all  its  sanguinary  violence.  At  one  time  he 
insists  on  the  radical  depravity  of  man,  and  his  inevi 
table  tendency  to  all  sorts  of  self-destruction,  while  at 
another  time  he  tries  to  make  out  that  there  is,  after  all, 
a  steady  progress  and  general  improvement  of  the  race. 
Now,  it  is  evident  that  both  these  views  cannot  be  true  ; 
for  if  there  is  progress,  there  must  be  a  law  of  progress, 
and  consequently,  no  incessant  proclivity  to  evil  ;  or  if 
there  be  that  uniform  proclivity  to  evil,  then  there  can 
be  no  general  progress,  only  a  capricious,  occasional, 
and  useless  fluctuation  from  bad  to  worse.  We  must 
do  Mr.  Alison  the  justice,  however,  to  confess  that  for 
the  most  part  he  adopts  the  obscurant  theory,  or  that 
view  of  human  affairs  which,  when  it  cannot  confirm 
its  own  prejudices  by  the  actual  facts,  refers  the  whole 
to  inscrutable  wisdom. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  Mr.  Alison  distrusts  all  popu 
lar  movements,  even  to  the  extent  of  doubting  whether 
popular  education  does  any  good.  He  regards  repre 
sentative  government  everywhere  as  a  failure,  but 
detests  the  United  States  especially,  because  it  is  an 
illustrious  example  of  its  success.  He  imagines  Eng 
land  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy  and  dissolution, 
because  free  trade  has  been  carried  there,  and  the 
popular  element  of  the  constitution  is  coming  into  the 
ascendant ;  and  he  vaticinates  like  another  Jeremiah  over 
the  entire  future.  We  do  not,  in  fact,  know  a  philos 
opher  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  who,  if  his  own  philo 
sophic  essays  on  man  and  nature  be  correct,  ought  to  feel 
more  uncomfortable  than  he,  in  the  present  advancing 
condition  and  brightening  prospects  of  mankind.  It 
were  scarcely  worth  while,  however,  to  quarrel  with  him 
for  his  inveterate  and  silly  toryism  ;  nor  take  him  to 
task,  as  we  might,  for  those  reiterated  misrepresentations 


Alison's  Histories  of  Eiirope.      217 

in  which  he  chooses  to  indulge  in  respect  to  the  charac 
ter  and  progress  of  Democracy,  particularly  as  it  has 
developed  itself  in  this  country.  We  shall  merely 
proffer  him  our  sincerest  compassion  for  the  difficulties 
of  his  position.  A  man  who  writes  the  history  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  under  a  serious  conviction  that  its 
experiences  are  a  solemn  warning  against  liberalism,  is 
one  of  the  saddest  spectacles  that  can  be  presented  to 
our  eyes.  The  labor  of  Sisyphus  was  nothing  to  his  : 
the  fruitless  experiments  of  the  Danaides,  nothing  :  and 
only  the  swimming  pig  of  Southey's  Devil's  Walk  can 
be  his  parallel.  Every  stroke  that  he  makes  helps  to 
cut  his  own  throat — every  fact  that  he  records  upsets  his 
theory.  His  painful  task  is  to  read  the  riddle  of  things 
backward.  Nor  ought  we  to  be  surprised  that  Mr.  Alison 
should  give  such  sterile  and  incomplete  accounts  of  the 
great  movements  in  literature,  science,  and  practical 
art,  which  have  distinguished  the  years  of  which  he 
writes  ;  for  if  he  had  done  otherwise,  in  good  sooth 
he  would  have  been  compelled  to  abandon  his  obscu 
rantism,  and  to  adopt  a  view  of  the  progress  of  human 
affairs  quite  damaging  to  his  pet  notion  of  the  extreme 
naughtiness  and  littleness  of  God's  noblest  creature, 
Man. 

Gervinus,  one  of  the  most  accomplished  and  pro 
found  of  German  historians,  lately  sentenced  to  prison 
at  Baden  for  the  publication  of  his  opinions,  taking  up 
the  doctrine  of  Aristotle,  that  the  law  of  human  develop 
ment  was  from  the  participation  of  the  few  to  that  of 
the  many  in  government,  demonstrates  and  confirms  it 
by  the  subsequent  experiences  of  two  thousand  years. 
•It  is  not  a  fancy,  he  says,  nor  a  declamatory  phrase,  nor 
a  hypothetical  judgment,  but  the  absolute,  scientific 
order,  as  certain  as  the  courses  of  the  stars,  or  the 
process  of  growth  in  the  individual  being.  But  what 


2  1 8      Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe. 

Gervinus  proves,  mainly  in  the  political  sphere,  made 
still  more  manifest  by  the  entire  course  and  consequence 
of  the  development  of  literature  and  science,  is  particu 
larly  striking  in  the  wonderful  achievements  of  the  last 
half-century.  In  the  death-blows  which  it  has  given  to 
the  old  feudal  and  aristocratic  maxims  and  practices,  in 
the  ameliorations  it  has  wrought  in  the  spirit  of  laws, 
in  the  growing  political  power,  moral  elevation,  and 
intellectual  enlightenment  of  the  masses  of  the  people, 
in  the  almost  universal  diffusion  of  letters,  as  well  as  in 
their  humanitarian  tone,  in  the  greater  cheapness  of  all 
the  appliances  of  every-day  life,  whereby  the  luxuries  of 
the  past  age  have  become  the  daily  comforts  of  this,  in 
the  prodigious  movements  imparted  to  trade,  by  the 
discovery  of  new  outlets  for  population,  new  fields  for 
labor,  new  rewards  for  enterprise ;  in  short,  in  the 
indescribably  numerous  and  inexhaustible  sources  of 
enjoyment  and  wealth,  bestowed  upon  all  communities 
by  the  revelations  of  science  and  their  practical  appli 
cation,  we  find  the  condition  of  mankind  advanced 
beyond  the  dreams  of  the  most  sanguine  enthusiasts 
of  former  generations,  and  we  see  in  them,  also,  a  pledge 
of  the  more  rapid  and  surprising  conquests  of  the 
future.  But  Mr.  Alison  finds  in  them,  and  sees  in  them, 
no  such  things  ;  he  finds  in  their  past  effects  only  a  dis 
turbance  of  his  cherished  notions  of  law  and  order, 
and  he  sees  in  their  future  promises  only  another 
"dispersion  of  mankind,"  like  that  on  the  plains  of 
Shinar, — produced,  too,  by  the  same  unholy  pride  and 
ambition  which  raised  the  vain  tower  of  Babel  ! 

Now,  it  is  because  he  does  not  find  and  see  these 
things,  or,  in  other  words,  because  he  does  not  com 
prehend  the  spirit  of  the  age  he  undertakes  to  describe, 
but  stands  in  a  relation  of  antagonism  to  it,  that  we 
pronounce  him  wholly  incapable  of  his  task.  No  actual 


Alisons  Histories  of  Europe.      219 

specimens  of  his  unskilfulness  are  necessary  to  convince 
us  of  his  unfitness.  He  may  string  facts  together  with 
never  so  much  industry,  describe  isolated  scenes  with 
the  animation  of  a  Napier,  analyze  individual  character 
with  the  eye  of  a  Scott ;  but  so  long  as  the  characters 
and  events  he  portrays  are  no  more  than  so  many 
shadows  dancing  upon  the  wall,  he  cannot  become 
their  historian.  A  Sandwich  islander,  suddenly  placed 
before  the  footlights  at  Niblo's,  when  Sontag  or  Alboni 
is  electrifying  the  intelligent  spectators  with  splendid 
visions  of  beauty,  might  as  well  hope  to  write  a  com 
petent  criticism  of  the  performance  for  the  next  day's 
Tribune,  as  a  historian  of  Mr.  Alison's  sympathies  to 
depict  the  Nineteenth  Century.  Granting  that  he  sees 
the  incidents  and  events  with  as  comprehensive  and 
minute  an  eye  as  any  other  man,  he  can  yet  see  only 
the  outside  of  them,  like  the  Otaheitan  at  the  play  ;  it 
is  impossible  that  he  should  see  the  motives  of  the  per 
formers,  and  much  less  the  scope  of  the  drama.  The 
principle  which  explains  all — the  struggle  for  human 
freedom — that  contest  of  man  for  the  mastery  of  nature, 
of  society,  of  himself,  which  is  the  open  secret  of  all 
history,  he  winks  out  of  sight,  and  he  puts  in  its  place 
some  marrowless  and  conservative  ignorantism. 

For  it  is  no  less  true  of  history  in  general,  than  it  is 
of  the  history  of  the  last  half-century,  that  without  this 
guiding  principle  of  freedom,  it  becomes  a  vast  and  in 
navigable  ocean,  clouded  with  mists  and  darkness. 
The  historian  who  puts  his  little  bark  forth  into  it, 
moves  forward  without  compass  or  chart.  Innumerable 
counter  currents  baffle  him  on  all  sides  ;  huge  sand 
banks  arrest  his  course  ;  coral  reefs  and  the  wrecks  of 
stranded  systems  scrape  his  keel,  the  storms  and  winds 
of  fierce  war  harry  the  skies,  so  that  he  is  driven  he 
knows  not  whither,  and  makes  the  shore,  when  he  ar- 


220      Alison  s  Histories  of  Europe. 

rives  at  all,  by  merest  chance.  But  had  he  carried 
with  him  the  chart  and  compass  of  freedom,  which  is 
the  great  law  of  all  the  evolutions  of  history,  he  might 
have  defied  the  tempests  and  mastered  the  stormy  seas, 
beholding  beyond  the  chaos  of  the  elements  a  beautiful 
sunshine  and  the  green  world  of  peace. 


THE  "  WORKS"  OF  AMERICAN 
STATESMEN.* 

]E  TOCQUEVILLE,  who  has  written  the  most 
appreciative  book  on  the  United  States  that 
has  been  published,  yet  falls  into  many  errors, 
among  which  we  are  disposed  to  class  what  he  says  of 
our  want  of  permanent  national  records.  His  words 
are  these  :  "  The  public  administration  (of  the  United 
States)  is  oral  and  traditionary.  But  little  is  committed 
to  writing,  and  that  little  is  wafted  away,  like  the  leaves 
of  the  Sibyl,  by  the  smallest  breeze.  The  only  historical 
remains  are  the  newspapers  ;  but,  if  a  number  be  want 
ing,  the  chain  of  time  is  broken,  and  the  Present  is 
severed  from  the  Past.  I  am  convinced,  that  in  fifty 
years  it  will  be  more  difficult  to  collect  authentic  docu 
ments  concerning  the  social  condition  of  the  Americans 
at  the  present  day,  than  it  is  to  find  the  remains  of  the 
administration  of  France  during  the  middle  ages  ;  and, 
if  the  United  States  were  ever  invaded  by  barbarians,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  have  recourse  to  the  history  of 
other  nations  in  order  to  learn  anything  of  the  people 
who  now  inhabit  them." 

It  is  a  curious  comment  on  this  speculation,  that  we 
have,  perhaps,  more  materials  for  the  minute  and  faith 
ful  history  of  our  political  and  social  life,  and  for  il 
lustrating  the  characters  of  our  great  men,  than  any 

*  From  Putnam's  Monthly,  June,  1853. 


222      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

other  nation.  Our  habit  of  preserving  memorials,  even 
insignificant  ones,  of  public  occurrences,  as  well  as  of 
men  who  have  made  any  conspicuous  figure,  is  almost 
a  vice.  The  voluminous  correspondence  of  the  Revo 
lutionary  worthies,  from  Washington  and  Franklin 
down  to  the  obscurer  personages  of  their  time ;  the 
private  memoirs,  that  the  families,  or  friends,  of  the 
Adamses,  Morris,  Livingston,  Jay,  Story,  Randolph, 
Jefferson,  and  Hamilton,  have  so  carefully  compiled  : 
the  labored  collections  of  the  Historical  Societies  of  the 
several  States,  extending  to  tracts,  pamphlets,  maps, 
state  papers,  and  books ;  the  records  of  local  celebra 
tions  and  festivities  preserved  in  the  archives  of  towns 
and  cities  ;  and,  finally,  the  newspapers,  of  which,  in 
their  multiplicity,  there  is  no  fear,  as  De  Tocqueville 
somewhat  ludicrously  intimates,  that  the  issue  of  a  sin 
gle  day  will  be  lost,  to  break  the  chain  of  events — are 
so  many  hostages  given  to  Time  to  secure  us  against 
his  fatal  inroads. 

We  are  reminded  also  of  another  disproof  of  the  re.- 
mark  we  have  quoted,  by  this  series  of  the  "Works"  of 
some  of  our  eminent  later  statesmen,  put  forth  by  them 
selves  or  their  admirers,  to  give  extension  and  perma 
nence  to  whatever  they  may  have  said  or  done  worthy 
of  notice.  There  is  now  lying  before  us  a  score  of 
volumes,  issued  within  the  last  few  months,  which 
contain  the  speeches  and  writings  of  Levi  Woodbury, 
William  H.  Seward,  Henry  Clay,  John  C.  Calhoun, 
and  Daniel  Webster,  together  with  attempts,  more  or 
less  elaborate,  in  the  form  of  biographies  and  notes,  to 
convey  "to  other  nations  and  to  future  times"  some 
knowledge  of  their  deeds  and  characters.  Mr.  Wood- 
bury  's  "Works"  are  in  three  volumes,  consisting  mainly 
of  his  speeches  as  Senator,  his  reports  as  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury,  and  his  occasional  addresses ;  Mr.  Seward 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     223 

appears  similarly  in  three  large  tomes  ;  Mr.  Clay  in 
two,  chiefly  of  speeches  ;  Mr.  Calhoun,  in  one,  con 
taining  his  dissertations  on  Government  and  on  the 
Constitution,  to  be  followed  by  four  other  volumes  of 
reports  and  speeches ;  and  Mr.  Webster  in  six,  em 
bracing  his  orations,  diplomatic  papers,  forensic  argu 
ments,  and  debates.  There  is,  consequently,  great 
sameness  in  the  subject-matter  of  these  publications ; 
but  that  fact  rather  heightens  than  impairs  their  utility, 
at  least  in  a  historical  sense,  because  it  furnishes  us 
with  the  views  of  several  different  minds,  in  respect  to 
the  same  great  questions  and  events. 

Embracing  as  they  do,  moreover,  discussions  of 
nearly  all  the  more  important  issues  that  have  arisen 
since  the  origin  of  our  democratic  government  and 
under  the  peculiar  structure  of  our  mixed  societies, — 
questions  of  agriculture,  industry,  education,  and  re 
ligion,  as  well  as  of  State  and  Federal  politics, — by  men 
who  moved  in  the  midst  of  the  agitations  they  caused, 
and  applied  the  best  energies  of  mind  and  heart  to  the 
peaceful  solution  of  each  as  it  arose,  these  volumes  not 
only  secure  us,  so  far  as  they  go,  from  the  reproach  of 
De  Tocqueville,  but  are  valuable  contributions  to  let 
ters,  as  well  as  to  history. 

For  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  literature  of  a 
nation  is  not  confined  to  magazines,  books,  journals,  and 
poems,  or  to  those  other  forms  in  which  the  intellectual 
life  of  a  people  is  ordinarily  expressed.  All  sincere 
and  vigorous  utterances  of  national  feeling  and  thought, 
become,  when  recorded,  a  part  of  that  literature.  Po 
litical  debates,  especially  in  a  nation  where  the  powers 
and  attainments  of  men  are  almost  universally  devoted 
to  active  pursuits,  as  they  are  with  us,  are  likely  to 
be  a  most  original  and  vital  part  of  it ;  and  springing 
warm  from  the  brains  of  foremost  men,  under  the  im- 


224      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

pulse  of  great  exigences,  when  their  minds  are  taxed 
to  the  highest  extent  to  overcome  opposition  and  to 
bring  about  worthy  and  noble  ends,  they  are  likely  to 
possess  an  earnestness,  freedom,  and  depth  of  pur 
pose,  which  we  do  not  always  find  in  the  colder  essays 
of  the  professed  man  of  letters.  At  least  they  will  be 
truer  to  the  form  and  pressure  of  the  time,  though,  per 
haps,  less  marked  by  scholastic  perfections. 

The  editors  of  these  books  then  have,  in  our  opinion, 
rightly  called  them  "Works  ;''  for  the  men  from  whom 
they  came  were  not  only  legislators,  orators,  magistrates, 
but  authors  as  well.  They  did  not  aim  at  literary  rep 
utation,  yet  their  efforts  have  the  characteristics  of  liter 
ary  performances.  They  are  an  expression  of  our 
national  peculiarities  ;  they  abound  in  pleasant  narra 
tives  of  facts,  skilful  dialectics,  comprehensive  and 
close  argument,  impassioned  eloquence  and  sarcastic 
retort ;  and  so  they  have  a  value  beyond  the  occasion 
in  which  they  originated. 

Mr.  Woodbury,  the  first  on  our  list,  was  not  a  man 
who  widely  influenced  his  day  and  generation,  and  we 
may  dismiss  him  in  few  words.  As  a  Senator  of  the 
United  States,  in  which  capacity  he  served  for  some 
years  ;  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  during  the  admin 
istration  of  Mr.  Van  Buren,  and  latterly  as  a  District 
Judge,  he  attained  to  a  respectable  position  :  he  served 
his  party  with  diligence,  and  was  evidently  a  man  of 
solid  judgment  and  sincere  faith  in  his  opinions  ;  but 
he  was  scarcely  a  leader  out  of  the  small  State  of  New 
Hampshire,  in  which  he  lived,  and  he  never  rose  to 
such  eminence  as  to  become  the  representative  of  any 
distinctive  or  vital  policy.  He  wrote  with  vigor,  but 
yet  without  grace  ;  his  sentences  are  cumbrous  ;  what 
he  saw  clearly  even,  he  did  not  always  state  clearly ; 
and  when  he  seeks  to  illustrate  a  position,  he  rather 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     225 

overloads  it  with  commonplace  ornament,  than  simpli 
fies  it  by  apt  and  lucid  figures.  A  politician  and  a 
jurist,  the  habit  of  his  mind  was  reserved  and  cautious. 
His  propositions  come  to  us  with  so  many  qualifying 
phrases, — with  so  many  -i/s,  butst  and  provideds,  that 
they  are  shorn  of  their  strength,  and  are  often  more  of 
a  puzzle  than  an  impulse  to  the  intellect.  At  the  same 
time,  Justice  Woodbury  had  strong  popular  sympathies, 
cherished  an  enlightened  and  liberal  political  philoso 
phy,  was  an  enthusiast,  almost,  in  his  hopes  of  human 
progress,  and  only  needed  to  have  surrendered  himself 
more  entirely  to  the  inspirations  of  this  side  of  his 
nature,  to  have  become  an  eloquent  writer  and  a  great 
man. 

Mr.  Seward,  we  think,  a  higher  order  of  mind,  not 
because  he  is  more  comprehensive  or  profound,  but 
because  he  has  a  finer  fibre  of  brain,  and  rises  more 
easily  into  the  region  of  general  principles.  He  is  a 
yet  living  statesman,  surrounded  by  prepossessions  and 
hostilities,  and  we  are  therefore  aware  that  our  estimate 
of  him  may  be  influenced  by  current  prejudices  ;  but 
we  have  read  his  writings  attentively,  and  are  prepared 
to  give  an  honest  judgment  as  to  their  merits. 

Most  men,  engaged  in  the  actual  contests  of  politics, 
are  liable  to  be  overrated  by  their  friends,  and  under 
rated  by  their  enemies  ;  but  the  peculiarity  of  Mr. 
Seward's  case  has  been,  that  he  has  reversed  the  process, 
and,  if  not  underrated  by  his  friends,  is  at  least  over 
rated  by  his  enemies.  In  other  words,  the  peculiar 
kind  of  opposition  that  he  has  encountered,  has 
given  him  a  prestige  beyond  the  influence  he  is  enti 
tled  to  by  his  real  abilities.  The  masses  of  the  peo 
ple,  hearing  him  decried  so  vehemently  as  a  most  dan 
gerous  fellow,  the  contriver  of  every  nefarious  plot,  and 
the  secret  agent  of  every  disorganizing  movement,  are 


226      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

apt  to  take  his  opponents  at  their  word,  and  to  be 
lieve  that  one  who  is  so  fertile  in  expedients  and  so  hard 
to  baffle,  must  be  a  prodigious  force,  destined  sooner  or 
later  to  the  most  commanding  sway.  Men  admire  suc 
cess,  and  even  the  reputation  of  it,  and  have  a  secret 
liking  for  those  who  are  roundly  abused.  This  was 
proved  in  another  case  lately,  that  of  Martin  Van  Bu- 
ren,  who  was  more  indebted  to  the  magical  influence 
his  foes  ascribed  to  him,  than  to  the  attachment  of  his 
friends  or  any  native  sagacity.  Give  a  man  a  name  for 
rare  shrewdness  and  management,  and  you  give  him  a 
host  of  admirers  ;  in  fact,  open  his  way,  without  efforts 
of  his  own,  to  almost  any  advancement. 

The  characteristics  of  Mr.  Seward's  mind  are  clear 
ness,  activity,  and  cunning,  to  use  the  last  term  in  its 
best  sense.  He  grasps  his  subjects  sharply,  manages 
them  with  subtle  and  quick  dexterity,  and  being  of  a 
sanguine  temperament,  never  wearies  of  the  labor  of 
elucidation  and  display.  His  logic,  however,  is  not  of 
the  close  and  compact  sort  which  may  be  compared  to 
mailed  armor,  impregnable  to  all  assaults.  It  is  rather 
demonstrative  than  convincing,  and  consists  more  in  the 
adroit  linking  together  of  facts,  than  in  the  rigid  deduc 
tion  of  principles.  But  he  has  great  facility  of  expres 
sion,  both  as  a  writer  and  speaker ;  is  always  perspicu 
ous,  generally  pleasing,  and  sometimes  eloquent ;  he 
has  read  considerably,  and  understandingly  ;  and  his 
style,  without  being  idiomatic  or  classical,  is  not  offen 
sively  incorrect.  He  avoids,  for  the  most  part,  that 
excessive  ornament,  that  turgid  floridity  so  common  to 
our  orators  ;  although  there  is  a  tendency  to  diffuse- 
ness,  and  a  swelling,  and  consequently,  languid  wordi 
ness  in  his  hastier  efforts  which  greatly  impair  their 
strength.  He  expatiates  too  much,  is  too  long  in  cov 
ering  his  ground,  and  is  apt  to  be  tedious  when  he 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     227 

ought  to  be  touching.  Had  he  compressed  what  he  has 
published  into  one-third  the  space,  he  might  have  said 
everything  that  he  has  now  said,  and  much  better.  Nor 
is  it  any  excuse  for  this  carelessness  of  composition,  to 
say  that  his  addresses  and  letters  were  prepared  in  the 
midst  of  active  occupations,  on  the  spur  of  the  mo 
ment,  and  without  time  for  that  limes  labor  which  gives 
finish  to  language.  This  might  have  been  an  excuse 
for  them,  as  originally  uttered,  but  not  for  them  as  de 
liberately  collected  and  edited.  Besides,  it  is  not  im 
possible  to  acquire  a  compact,  precise,  and  simple  style, 
even  in  extemporaneous  effusions — to  make  compres 
sion  the  habit  of  the  mind — and  when  we  consider  what 
a  lasting  charm  it  lends  to  speech,  the  neglect  of  it,  es 
pecially  by  men  who  desire  to  be  read  widely,  and  in 
after-times,  seems  a  strange  imprudence. 

There  is  another  defect  of  his  compositions,  arising 
partly  in  the  same  causes  which  produce  diffuseness,  and 
partly  in  a  limited  range  of  cultivation,  which  is,  the 
use  of  worn  and  current  metaphors,  or  commonplace 
turns  of  expression.  Not  remarkably  original  in  his 
views,  he  is  less  so  in  his  language.  We  miss  that  nice 
choice  of  words,  those  racy,  idiomatic  phrases,  those 
graceful  and  happy  allusions,  those  pregnant  epithets, 
which  condense  a  whole  argument  into  a  word,  and 
those  novel  and  picturesque  suggestions,  which  relieve 
the  weight  of  argument,  to  be  found  in  the  masters  of  art. 
Yet  Mr.  Seward  goes  far  toward  supplying  the  place  of 
these  finer  strokes  of  genius  by  his  amiable  and  con 
ciliating  manner,  his  temper  singularly  free  from  gall, 
his  vivacious  readiness,  and  his  elastic,  almost  exuber 
ant  vitality,  answering  the  purpose  of  a  genuine  en 
thusiasm.  If  he  does  not  produce  deep  and  vivid  im 
pressions,  he  carries  his  readers  with  him  by  the  lucidity 
of  his  statement,  the  intrepid  and  manly  spirit  in  which 


228       Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

he  meets  difficulties  and  announces  principles,  and  his 
obvious  command  of  his  position.  Never  impassioned, 
even  in  his  most  declamatory  passages,  he  is  yet  always 
animated  and  fresh,  full  of  hope,  and  thoroughly 
American. 

It  is  no  part  of  our  duty,  as  reviewers,  to  question  the 
sincerity  of  Mr.  Seward's  convictions  as  a  politician  ; 
the  less  so,  as  we  find  his  opinions  cohering  in  an  in 
telligent  and  consistent  scheme  of  political  doctrine. 
Nor  do  'his  volumes  furnish  us  any  occasion  for  doubt 
ing  the  perfectly  unaffected  nature  of  his  popular  ten 
dencies.  He  everywhere  expresses  his  opinions  frankly, 
even  in  the  face  of  a  known  hostile  sentiment.  We  do 
not  detect  him  in  any  of  the  meaner  arts  of  the  dema 
gogue,  cannot  lay  our  hands  upon  any  single  act  of 
political  trimming,  but,  on  the  contrary,  note  an  un 
usual  persistence  of  purpose,  and  a  manly  assertion 
often  of  generous  though  unaccepted  truths  ;  and  yet 
we  fear  the  while  that  his  virtue  is  not  of  "the  incorrigi 
ble  and  losing"  sort. 

Perhaps  our  utter  disagreement  with  the  school  of 
statesmen  to  which  Mr.  Seward  belongs,  may  account 
for  this  uneasy  feeling.  The  school  we  allude  to  is  that 
which  tends  to  aggrandize  the  action  of  government  at 
the  expense  of  the  spontaneous  action  of  the  people. 
It  makes  the  State  a  sort  of  omnipotent  and  omnipres 
ent,  and  consequently  omnivorous  power  in  society — a 
Jack-of-all-trades,  a  supreme  moralist,  a  universal  peda 
gogue,  a  high  Justice  Rotulorum,  a  beneficent  Provi 
dence.  It  comprises,  within  the  sphere  of  government, 
every  function  almost  of  society  and  of  individuals, 
causing  it  to  build  railroads  and  canals,  regulate  com 
merce,  encourage  trade,  equip  steamships,  promote 
agriculture,  educate  children,  and  support  the  poor — all 
in  additioji  to  its  ordinary  and  more  legitimate  duties  of 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.      229 

protecting,  on  terms  of  perfect  equality,  the  persons  and 
property  of  its  citizens  !  Now,  is  it  not  obvious  at  a 
glance,  that  this  theory  of  the  objects  of  legislation, 
whatever  advantages  it  may  have  in  other  respects,  opens 
the  way  to  enormous  abuses,  inviting  the  assaults  of 
schemers  and  profligates,  and  inflaming  while  it  debases 
the  contests  of  parties  ?  Wherever  it  is  adopted  a  State 
must  be  looked  upon,  not  as  the  arbiter  of  an  absolute 
justice  between  man  and  man,  but  as  the  dispenser  of 
corrupt  and  mercenary  favors  ;  and  those  statesmen  who 
make  themselves  conspicuous  in  bending  legislation 
from  its  lofty,  important,  and  true  ends,  to  the  advance 
ment  of  local  and  individual  privileges,  must  inevitably 
excite  against  themselves  the  suspicion  of  sinister  and 
unworthy  motives.  Of  course  that  suspicion  is  often 
misplaced,  but  the  general  prevalence  of  it  cannot  be 
denied.  Only  a  man  of  Washington's  continence,  or 
of  Hampden's  integrity,  could  escape  the  taint  of  impu 
tation  ;  and  Mr.  Seward,  therefore,  who  has  long  been 
active  in  pushing  projects  of  one-sided  benefit,  should 
not  complain  if  the  public,  in  spite  of  his  nobler  and 
more  disinterested  performances,  should  confound  his 
motives  with  those  of  his  sordid  clients.  The  whole 
system  of  special  legislation  and  patronage,  is  deplora 
bly  wrong,  and  those  who  dabble  in  it  can  hardly  avoid 
defilement. 

We  think  this  idea  of  the  sphere  of  government  is 
deplorably  wrong,  and  yet  we  are  not  prepared  to  state 
with  any  precision  where  the  limit  of  State  action  properly 
begins  or  ends.  How  much  should  be  left  to  the  indi 
vidual,  and  how  much  the  State  may  legitimately  do,  is 
the  great  unadjusted  question  of  political  science.  If 
ve  adopt  the  extreme  democratic  theory,  which  confines 
the  State  to  the  simple  protection  of  person  and  prop 
erty,  or  to  those  objects  which  are  common  to  every 


230       Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

member  of  society,  we  deprive  ourselves  of  an  important 
means  of  advancing  individual  and  social  welfare,  which 
could  not  be  so  well  advanced  in  any  other  way  ;  whilst, 
on  the  other  hand,  if  we  assume  the  unlimited  authority 
of  government  to  interpose  in  every  subject  of  public 
concern,  we  cannot  stop  short  either  of  gross  despotism 
or  gross  corruption.  The  liberty  of  the  citizen  to 
achieve  his  own  fortune  in  his  own  way,  provided  he 
does  not  infringe  on  the  same  right  in  others,  ought  to 
be  sacred  under  all  circumstances  ;  yet,  who  will  deny 
that  there  are  objects  of  vast  general  utility,  "enter 
prises  of  pith  and  moment,"  which  cannot  or  will  not 
be  accomplished,  if  abandoned  to  the  voluntary  efforts 
of  individuals  ?  Take  a  case  in  point,  of  immense 
interest  just  now — the  railroad  to  the  Pacific  !  Ought 
it  to  be  undertaken  by  the  Government  or  by  individ 
uals  ?  If  you  say  by  individuals,  the  reply  is,  that  it 
would  require  an  outlay  of  labor  and  capital  to  which 
no  private  company  could  be  competent,  even  were 
such  a  prodigious  company  itself  not  a  dangerous  thing 
to  create.  Again,  if  you  say  by  the  Government,  you 
must  see  that  it  would  inevitably  lead  to  a  most  perni 
cious  concentration  of  patronage,  to  a  wholesale  jobbing 
in  the  Legislature,  and  to  acts  of  aggravated  injustice  in 
respect  to  different  localities.  Who  will  draw  the  line, 
therefore,  between  what  the  State  ought  to  do,  and  what 
it  ought  not?  Who  will  tell  us  how  far  individuals 
ought  to  surrender  to  society,  or  where  its  interference 
is  an  encroachment,  or  where  a  right  ?  Everybody  ad 
mits  that  society  ought  to  punish  crime,  for  without 
such  discipline  the  continued  existence  of  society  would 
be  impossible — but  ought  it  not  then,  for  a  stronger 
reason,  to  institute  means  for  the  prevention  of  crime — to 
guarantee  the  poor  against  anxiety  and  dependence,  the 
most  prolific  causes  of  crime  ;  to  educate  the  ignorant; 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.      231 

to  remove  the  means  of  temptation,  and  to  encourage 
virtue  in  every  way  ?  You  answer  yes  !  Then  why  not 
establish  a  religion  which  experience  has  proved  is  a 
most  efficient  agent  of  social  regeneration  ?  But  by  estab 
lishing  a  religion  you  are  a  long  way  on  toward  des 
potism.  Or  to  reverse  the  process  of  the  argument,  we 
may  say,  that  if  you  leave  religion  to  the  voluntary  ac 
tion  of  the  people,  why  not  the  whole  subject  of  educa 
tion  ;  why  not  the  support  of  the  insane  and  poor ; 
why  not  the  organization  of  the  police  ;  why  not  the 
line  of  coast  defences  ;  in  short,  why  have  any  govern 
ment  at  all,  why  not  surrender  the  care  of  every  interest 
of  society  to  voluntary  action  ?  But  this  would  be  an 
archy,  and  thus  on  either  hypothesis  we  fluctuate  from 
one  extreme  to  the  other,  until  our  faith  in  the  existence 
of  any  stable  political  science  is  quite  lost.* 

Henry  Clay,  whose  works  are  the  next  on  our  list, 
was,  by  general  consent,  the  most  finished  and  splendid 
orator  of  a  nation  prolific  of  orators.  Versatile,  adroit, 
bold,  profound,  pathetic,  and  imperious — an  able  tac 
tician,  a  far-sighted  statesman,  a  born  leader  of  men, — 
his  eloquence  was  of  that  masterly  order  which 
"wielded  at  will  the  fierce  democratic, "  but  commanded 
no  less  the  selecter  applause  of  senates.  But  great  as 
was  its  influence  on  his  contemporaries,  and  intense 
and  fervent  the  admiration  which  it  excited,  it  will  be 
perpetuated,  we  suspect,  rather  as  a  remembrance  and  a 
tradition,  than  as  a  still  living  power.  The  volumes  in 
which  it  is  recorded  convey  some  idea  of  its  combined 
fervor,  grace,  and  force,  but  a  most  inadequate  one. 
They  are  not  as  bad  as  the  skeletons  of  Whitfield's 

[*  I  allow  this  passage  to  stand,  although  since  it  was  written  I 
have  been  led  to  adopt  the  democratic  theory  in  all  its  length  and 
breadth.] 


232        Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

sermons,  which  cause  us  to  wonder  how  the  man  could 
have  left  such  a  reputation — mere  simulacra  of  a  de 
parted  reality;  for  they  contain  his  arguments,  his  facts, 
his  illustrations,  his  appeals;  in  short,  some  indications 
of  the  large  make  and  movement  of  the  man  ;  but  the 
charm  and  the  spirit  are  spent.  The  flashing  eye,  the 
rich  melodious  voice,  the  commanding  form,  "the 
snowy  front,  curled  with  golden  hair,"  which  gave  them 
their  original  life,  are  gone  ;  and,  as  we  read  them,  we 
feel  like  one  who  walks  through  the  cavern  of  some 
mighty  dead  magician — the  tools  and  instruments  of  his 
spells  are  about  us,  his  gems,  his  treasures,  his  magic 
rings,  his  weird  circles  and  diagrams — in  fine,  all  the 
evidences  of  his  art — but  the  fire  smoulders  in  his  fur 
nace,  and  he  himself  hath  vanished  into  thin  air. 

Both  roof  and  floor,  and  walls,  are  all  of  gold, 
But  overgrown  with  dust  and  old  decay. 

This  is  the  proverbial  disadvantage  of  the  orator, 
compared  with  the  writer,  that  the  best  part  of  his  per 
formance  escapes  with  the  occasion  ;  and  if  he  be  an 
active  politician,  he  has  no  time  to  compensate,  by  the 
labors  of  the  study,  for  the  haste  and  immaturity  of  his 
extemporaneous  efforts.  His  words  are  given  loosely 
to  the  wind,  and  the  wind  carries  them  on  its.  swift 
wings  to  the  distant  interlunar  caves,  to  be  returned  to 
him  no  more  forever.  On  the  other  hand,  the  writer, 
ripened  by  nutritious  culture,  and  purified  from  taint  by 
the  refining  processes  of  his  art,  commits  his  treasures 
to  the  imperishable  amber  of  print.  So,  being  dead, 
he  yet  speaks,  and,  in  addition  to  the  effects  he  wrought 
and  the  honors  he  enjoyed  while  living,  diffusion  and 
perpetuity  are  given  to  his  fame  when  he  is  dead. 

Mr.    Clay,    perhaps,    less    than  most   other  orators, 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     233 

requires  to  be  embalmed  in  type,  because  his  services 
as  a  statesman,  though  not  always  successful,  were  so 
active  and  comprehensive,  as  to  have  connected  his 
name  with  the  history  of  his  country,  and  left  an  endur 
ing  mark  upon  its  legislation.  Nevertheless,  we  cannot 
but  think  that  the  world  has  been  a  loser  by  the  liberal 
share  of  time  and  tafent  which  he  allowed  the  cares 
of  office,  and  the  details  of  party  management,  to 
absorb.  His  endowments  were  so  generous,  that  he 
needed  only  to  have  nurtured  and  husbanded  them,  to 
have  raised  himself  to  the  loftiest  niche  of  greatness. 
The  love  and  admiration,  which  are  now  confined  to 
his  countrymen  and  his  friends,  would,  in  that  case, 
have  been  expanded  into  the  love  and  admiration  of 
mankind  ;  and  no  position,  in  the  universal  respect, 
that  it  was  possible  for  penetration,  sagacity,  vigorous 
powers  of  reason,  affluent  imagination,  quick  sympa 
thies,  and  high  aspirations  to  attain,  could  have  been  too 
exalted  or  permanent  for  his  reach. 

Mr.  Clay,  in  genius  and  character,  was  not  unlike 
Hamilton,  whose  work  he  may  be  said  to  have  taken 
up  where  it  was  left,  and  to  have  carried  on  with  the 
same  indomitable  purpose,  and  a  no  less  brilliant  dis 
play  of  power.  Cherishing  the  same  tendencies  toward 
a  strong  and  splendid  government,  gifted  with  the  same 
courteous  and  seductive  personal  qualities,  dividing 
opposition  by  the  assiduity  of  their  address,  and  rally 
ing  support  by  their  exultant  confidence  in  success  ; 
alike  bold,  ambitious,  and  patriotic, — they  identified 
their  names  with  every  great  question  of  the  day,  both 
of  domestic  administration  and  of  foreign  policy ;  they 
infused  their  own  spirit  into  a  vast  and  powerful  party, 
while  they  held  its  opponents  in  check  ;  and  after  the 
glory  of  having  founded  our  institutions,  they  share  the 
next  honor  of  having  modified  and  controlled  their 


234       Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

character  and  development.  It  was  the  superior  fortune 
of  Mr.  Clay,  however,  to  have  lived  to  the  mellow  fruit- 
fulness  of  his  autumn  :  envious  Death  did  not  snatch 
him  away  untimely,  while  the  glow  of  his  young  hopes 
was  yet  fresh  on  his  cheeks  ;  but,  full  of  honors,  full 
of  years,  the  little  enmities  of  partisan  warfare  softened 
by  his  venerable  age,  as  the  fierce  heats  of  the  sun  are 
cooled  by  the  coming  night — 

"  Life's  blessings  all  enjoyed,  life's  labor  done, 
Serenely  to  his  final  rest  he  passed." 

Mr.  Calhoun,  in  respect  to  the  preparation  and  finish 
of  his  works,  enjoyed  no  inconsiderable  advantage  over 
Mr.  Clay.  Engaged,  like  him,  for  the  greater  part  of 
his  life,  in  the  arduous  labors  of  leadership  and  office, 
the  peculiar  habits  of  his  mind  yet  enabled  him  to  pre 
serve  more  pure  and  compact,  and  consequently  more 
lasting  qualities  of  style.  The  dissipations  of  debate 
never  prevailed  over  his  stern  intellectual  integrity.  He 
read  little,  but  reflected  much,  and  when  he  spoke, 
which  was  not  often,  considering  his  multiplied  oppor 
tunities,  he  spoke  from  a  full  mind,  with  extreme  pre 
cision  and  directness,  and  always  in  view  of  some  single 
and  important  end.  His  speeches,  therefore,  are 
models  of  severe  and  cogent  reasoning,  and  no  less 
complete  as  compositions  than  they  are  crowded  as 
storehouses  of  thought.  The  intense  will  that  pervades 
them,  carrying  the  reader  along  with  impetuous  force, 
as  if  he  were  in  the  hands  of  a  giant,  stamps  them  with 
an  individual  and  peculiar  life.  Besides  this,  Mr. 
Calhoun  was  permitted,  in  his  latter  days,  to  embody 
the  malurer  results  of  his  lifelong  studies  in  the  perma 
nent  form  of  a  treatise  on  Government.  Those  original 
views  of  politics,  which  are  scattered  through  his  reports 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     23.5 

and  addresses,  in  incomplete  expositions,  were  thus  con 
densed  into  an  elaborate  system,  perfect  in  its  parts  and 
finished  as  a  whole.  We  see  in  it  the  mother-thoughts 
of  all  his  political  action  ;  explaining  whatever  may 
have  been  supposed  to  be  inconsistent  in  it  ;  and 
exhibiting  him  as  an  acute  and  profound  metaphysical 
philosopher  as  well  as  an  orator  and  statesman. 

The  characteristics  uniformly  conceded  to  Mr.  Cal- 
houn,  by  men  of  all  shades  of  opinion,  were,  a  power 
ful  and  subtle  analytic  intellect,  a  subdued  and  chastened 
but  intense  enthusiasm,  fearless  reliance  upon  the  con 
clusions  of  his  own  mind,  chivalric  honor,  and  a 
stainless  purity  of  personal  character.  Another  impres 
sion,  however,  was  no  less  universal  in  regard  to  him, 
namely,  that  he  carried  his  logical  processes  to  an 
impracticable  degree  of  refinement,  allowing  mere 
abstract  speculation  to  override  his  more  practical  con 
clusions  ;  while  the  earnestness  of  his  convictions, 
hurrying  him  into  hasty  judgments,  narrowed  his  sym 
pathies,  and  blinded  him  to  the  broader  interests  of 
humanity.  His  Book  both  confirms  and  relieves  this 
estimate.  It  deepens  our  sense  of  his  abilities,  and  also 
of  the  dangers  they  were  exposed  to  from  his  metaphys 
ics  ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  raises  his  extreme  Southern- 
ism,  from  the  suspicion  of  a  mere  sectional  bias,  into  a 
systematic  principle.  We  see  that  a  singular  unity 
pervaded  his  opinions  because  they  were  legitimate 
outgrowths  of  his  fundamental  ideas,  and  in  no  sense 
transient  or  temporary  feelings.  He  was  the  fanatic — 
using  the  words  in  no  offensive  sense — of  his  reason, 
and  wherever  that  led  him,  he  pursued  it,  regardless  of 
the  consequences. 

Two  curious  inconsistencies  strike  us  in  the  intellec 
tual  constitution  of  Mr.  Calhoun.  Born  in  a  region 
where  the  tropical  sun  is  apt  to  ripen  human  passion 


236      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

into  the  rank  luxuriance  which  it  imparts  to  physical 
nature,  he  was  yet  the  severest  dialectician  and  the  least 
ornamental    writer  among  all  our  distinguished    men. 
His    style,   though  intense,  was   rigidly   intellectual,— 
plain,    direct,    cogent,    sinewy,    and    unyielding.       No 
flowers  of  fancy  ever  bloomed  along  its  path  ;  it  never 
wandered    into  rich  meads  or  leafy  woods  ;    but,  arid 
and  hot,  like  a  way  across  the  desert,  it  bore  along  its 
burdens    of  thought,   without   furnishing   us   a   single 
cooling  oasis  or  one  refreshing  shade.      The  voluptuous 
life,   the   magnificence  and  pomp,   the   exuberant   ful 
ness  and  deep-toned  harmonies  of  the  Southern  zones, 
seem  not  to  have  moved  the  springs  of  his   being, — 
never  made  his  brain  delirious  or  kindled  his  heart  into 
poetry.      As  well    might  he   have  been  born  in  Nova 
Zembla,  or  anywhere  above  the  line  of  perpetual  snow, 
as  in  the  South,  for  any  effect   that  climate  produced 
upon  his  imagination  and  fancy.      On  the  contrary,  the 
sobriquet  given  to  him,  of  "  the  cast-iron  man,"  would 
show   rather  that  he  came  out   of  the  bowels    of  our 
rugged     northern    mountains ;      like     iron,      he     was 
capable  of  intense  heat  and  a  slight  glow,  but  of  no 
brilliancy    or    sparkle.      Stern,    dignified,    upright,    he 
was  at  all  times  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  great 
Senator.       A   witticism,    proceeding   from    his  mouth, 
would  have  seemed  a  sort  offelo  dese ;  and  a  capricious, 
fantastic,  or  grotesque  conceit,  the  beginning  of  mental 
aberration.      It  is  said  that  in  the  bosom  of  his  family, 
among  his  friends,  neighbors,  and  servants,  he  relaxed 
into  some  lambent  play  of  the  affections,  but  we  who 
saw  him  only  wrapped  in  his  senatorial   robes,  like  a 
stern  old  Roman,  must  regard  the  report  as  a  myth. 

The  second  peculiarity  of  Mr.  Calhoun  consisted  in 
this: — that  he,  the  only  one  of  our  .statesmen  who 
defended  the  social  anomaly  of  slavery,  not  as  a  politi- 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     2 


37 


cal  expedient  or  a  necessity  of  circumstance,  but  as  an 
intrinsic  and  actual  good,  yet  passed  his  life  in  the  elab 
oration  of  a  scheme  of  government  for  giving  the  amplest 
security  to  individual  freedom.  A  republican  by  con 
viction,  as  well  as  a  democrat  by  party  affinity,  he  was 
so  dissatisfied  with  that  democracy  which  allows  the 
majority  of  the  people  to  rule,  that  he  contrived  an 
ingenious  system  of  checks  and  negatives  for  protecting 
minorities  against  its  oppressive  domination.  His 
posthumous  treatise  on  Government  has  for  its  principal 
object  a  demonstration  of  the  despotism  of  the  many, 
and  the  absolute  need  of  a  constitution  of  society  in 
which  every  interest,  and  as  near  as  possible  every  man, 
shall  be  represented.  All  the  acumen  of  his  analysis, 
all  the  craft  and  vigor  of  his  logic,  all  his  experience  of 
affairs,  and  the  untaxed  energy  of  his  imperious  will, 
were  turned  to  the  elucidation  and  enforcement  of  these 
views,  in  the  hope  of  restraining  power  and  enlarging 
liberty.  No  man  ever  inveighed  more  vehemently  than 
he  against  the  encroachments  of  the  State  upon  the 
rights  of  the  citizen,  except  that  when  he  depicted  the 
blessings  of  slavery,  he  was  equally  vehement.  He 
thus  exhibited  to  the  world  the  spectacle  of  a  democrat 
who  resisted  the  organized  expression  of  the  will  of  the 
majority,  and  a  republican  who  consecrated  his  days  to 
the  support  and  extension  of  a  state  of  society  founded 
on  the  subjugation  of  one  race  by  another.  Nor  is  it 
less  worthy  of  note,  that  his  countrymen,  convinced  of 
his  thorough  simplicity  and  truthfulness,  forgot  the 
inconsistency  of  his  opinions  in  their  admiration  of  his 
character. 

Mr.  Calhoun's  theory  of  government  was  simply  this  : 
That  as  society  is  the  natural  state  of  man,  and  man 
prefers  his  own  interests  to  the  well-being  of  others, 
government  is  necessary  to  balance  the  selfish  by  the 


238      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

social  propensities.  But  then,  as  the  exercise  of  its 
powers  must  be  lodged  in  the  hands  of  individuals  who 
are  prone  to  prefer  their  own  interests  to  the  general 
good,  a  constitution  is  necessary  to  restrain  the  govern 
ment.  How,  then,  is  that  constitution  to  be  framed  ? 
We  see  that  it  can  only  be  administered  by  men  ;  and 
we  see,  too,  that  those  men  will  be  tempted  by  the  uni 
versal  tendency  of  their  natures,  to  become  unfaithful 
to  their  trusts.  By  what  contrivance  shall  the  public  be 
secured  against  the  abuse  of  their  power,  against  extor 
tion,  oppression,  and  wrong  ?  Quis  cuslodes  ipsos 
custodial*}  If  you  say,  by  universal  suffrage,  you  only 
substitute  a  dominant  majority  for  your  former  authority, 
and  which  would  have  the  same  tendency  to  the  misuse 
of  its  powers  as  any  other  irresponsible  ruler.  Nor 
would  a  free  press  be  any  restraint,  because,  firstly,  it 
cannot  change  that  principle  of  human  nature  in  which 
the  necessity  of  governments  originates  ;  and  secondly, 
because  the  press  always  leans  to  the  heavier  side  of  the 
scale,  to  the  strongest  interest  or  combination  of 
interests,  so  that  it  exasperates  rather  than  cures  or 
alleviates  the  evil. 

The  only  solution  of  the  difficulty  Mr.  Calhoun  finds 
in  his  doctrine  of  "concurrent  majorities,"  as  opposed 
to  numerical  majorities,  whereby  he  gives  to  separate 
parts  or  interests  of  society  a  negative  upon  the  action 
of  the  other  parts  or  interests.  Thus,  in  the  Roman 
republic,  the  power  of  the  patricians,  which  would  have 
been  otherwise  exorbitant,  was  restrained  by  the  unquali 
fied  veto  of  the  tribunes,  who  represented  the  plebeian 
orders ;  thus,  in  the  Polish  diet,  each  member  had  a 
liberum  veto,  an  absolute  negative  upon  the  passage  of 
offensive  laws  ;  thus,  too,  in  the  Iroquois  confederacy 
or  league  of  the  Six  Nations,  in  our  own  history,  each 
tribe  possessed  a  power  to  resist  its  decisions ;  and  thus, 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     239 

in  the  United  States,  he  would  have  given  a  power  of 
nullification  to  each  of  the  separate  States,  in  all  cases 
of  fancied  grievance  or  outrage. 

This  original  and  ingenious  system,  to  which  we 
only  allude,  not  pretending  to  furnish  more  than  the 
meagerest  outline  of  it,  Mr.  Calhoun  develops  with 
amazing  energy  of  argument.*  His  incidental  remarks, 
especially  on  the  tyranny  of  majorities,  and  the  odious 
practice  known  in  this  country  as  "the  division  of  the 
spoils,"  are  replete  with  the  profoundest  wisdom.  But 
his  system,  as  a  whole,  is,  in  our  opinion,  unsound  in 
its  premises,  and  impracticable  in  its  applications.  In 
the  first  place,  we  do  not  believe  that  government 
originates  in  this  supposed  conflict  between  the  selfish 
and  social  propensities  of  mankind,  but  that  it  is  as 
much  an  original  impulse  of  nature  as  society  itself. 
In  other  words,  we  think  that  the  tendency  of  man  to 
some  form  of  unitary  organization  is  an  instinct  of  his 
being,  prior  to  all  reflection,  and  as  strong  as  his  in 
most  soul.  History  has  given  us  no  instance  of  society, 
even  in  its  most  savage  state,  without  government,  nor 
can  w^e  conceive  of  society  as  possible,  without  some 
kind  of  central  authority  and  direction.  Society,  to  be 
a  society  at  all — i.  e.,  to  act  as  a  corporate  existence  in 
any  sense — must  also  be  a  government,  and  that,  too, 
whether  we  suppose  its  members  to  be  the  devils  in 
hell  or  angels  in  heaven.  In  the  second  place,  ad 
mitting  Mr.  Calhoun's  notion  of  the  predominance  of 
the  selfish  propensities,  it  seems  to  us  that  he  does  not 
allow  sufficiently  for  those  other  tendencies  which  con 
cur  in  mitigating  and  modifying  their  practical  action, 
such  as  the  affections  which  bind  families  and  neigh 
borhoods  together,  and  even  the  governors  to  the  gov- 

*  We  have  considered  it  at  length  in  another  Essay 


240      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

erned — such  as  the  natural  sense  of  justice,  which  re 
strains  all  men  more  or  less — and  the  common  interest 
which  all  men  have  in  order,  peace,  and  security.  He 
takes  his  single  principle,  of  the  all-pervading  force  of 
individual  selfishness,  and  pushes  it  to  its  conclusion 
without  regard  to  opposing  principles  or  moderating 
circumstances. 

Again,  in  his  provision  of  remedies  for  the  abuses  of 
power,  he  runs  into  an  impracticable  conclusion,  be 
cause  his  scheme,  if  carried  out,  could  only  result  in 
anarchy.  If  you  give  to  every  interest  in  society  a  con 
stitutional  ability  to  arrest  the  action  of  the  government, 
whenever  it  might  please  to  withhold  its  concurrence 
from  a  law,  we  do  not  see  how  there  could  be  any 
government  at  all.  Some  one  or  other  of  the  parts 
would  be  forever  in  conflict  with  the  whole  ;  for  though 
Mr.  Calhoun  alleges  that  the  effect  of  his  arrangement 
would  only  be  to  cause  the  different  interests,  portions, 
or  orders  to  desist  from  attempting  to  adopt  any  meas 
ure  calculated  to  promote  the  prosperity  of  one  or  more 
by  sacrificing  that  of  the  others,  and  then  to  force  them 
to  unite  in  such  measures  as  would  promote  the  pros 
perity  of  all — we  are  quite  sure,  from  the  almost  uni 
versal  experience  of  our  race  in  schemes  of  concerted 
action,  that  the  practical  operation  would  be  no  action 
at  all.  The  case  of  a  jury  which  he  cites,  as  to  the 
practicability  of  unanimous  decisions,  is  not  in  point, 
for  the  reason  that  a  jury  is  chosen  expressly  on  the 
ground  that  it  has  no  interest  in  the  verdict ;  but  if  we 
suppose  that  each  of  the  twelve  men  who  compose  it 
had  a  separate  personal  interest  to  be  determined,  what 
would  become  of,  not  the  unanimity  only,  but  the  con 
currence?  A  compromise,  founded  on  the  majority  of 
their  interests,  is  the  nearest  approach  that  they  would 
be  likely  to  make  to  any  just  decision. 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     241 

But  while  we  are  disinclined  to  adopt  the  theory  of 
Mr.  Calhoun,  we  are  eager  to  remark  that  he  seems  to 
us  to  have  been  aiming  at  a  most  important  principle  in 
the  sphere  of  political  and  social  organization.  It  is 
this  :  The  necessity  of  restricting  the  powers  of  our 
general  governments,  and  of  referring  society  back 
more  and  more  to  its  local  and  individual  elements. 
The  leading  peculiarity  of  our  political  system  has  been 
said  to  be  the  recognition  of  the  township  ;  and  we  see 
no  reason  why  the  township  itself  should  not  be  organ 
ized,  with  its  separate  industrial  interests,  so  as  to  give 
a  larger  scope  to  individual  freedom,  and  at  the  same 
time  provide  for  an  affiliated  or  combined  action.  This, 
however,  is  not  the  place  nor  time  for  advancing  new 
theories,  and  we  return  to  our  task. 

What  Mr.  Calhoun  is  supposed  by  many  to  have 
wanted,  Mr.  Webster  had  in  perfection — robust,  broad, 
practical  understanding.  He  was  the  personification 
of  the  Understanding,  as  distinguished  from  the  intui 
tive  Reason  and  the  creative  Imagination.  Our  read 
ing  does  not  enable  us  to  recall  many  men,  of  any 
epoch,  more  largely  endowed  with  what  is  best  expressed 
by  the  simple  word,  mind.  There  have  been  many 
more  brilliant  men,  men  of  more  original  insight,  of 
finer  instincts,  of  more  versatile  and  comprehensive 
genius,  of  quicker  and  bolder  and  more  susceptible 
imagination,  of  more  delicate  and  irritable  fancy,  of 
loftier  moral  aspirations,  but  few  of  more  masculine  in 
tellect.  If  we  were  required  to  designate  him  by  a 
single  phrase,  we  should  say  that  he  was  a  man  of  su 
perb  talent.  He  cannot,  of  course,  be  compared  to 
Plato  or  Bacon,  or  any  of  that  exalted  order  whose 
thoughts  create  epochs  in  the  history  of  the  race  ;  nor 
yet  to  those  commanding  geniuses  of  action,  like  Caesar 
or  Napoleon,  who  handle  nations  as  an  artist  handles 


242      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

his  materials  ;  still  less  to  the  all-prevailing  poets,  the 
Shakspeares,  Miltons,  and  Goethes,  on  whom  the  most 
exuberant  measure  of  the  divine  glory  is  poured  :  for 
his  faculties  lay  in  a  different  line  from  all  these  ; 
his  sphere  was  not  that  of  creation,  but  of  advocacy  ; 
and  we  must  look  for  his  parallel,  therefore,  among  the 
Ciceros,  the  Pitts,  the  Mirabeaus,  the  O'Connells,  the 
Peels,  and  the  Clays  of  the  Senate  House  and  the 
Forum.  Less  than  some  of  these  in  certain  respects, 
he  is  greater  than  any  one  of  them  in  others ;  Cicero 
excels  him  in  culture,  Mirabeau  in  energy,  Pitt  in  fer 
tility  of  resource  ;  but  for  the  union  of  strength  with 
grace  of  intellect, — for  calm,  easy  dignity  of  manner,— 
for  ponderous  facility  of  argumentation, — for  lawyer- 
like  clearness  of  perception,  and  solid,  broad,  practical 
diplomacy,  he  occupies  a  position  almost  apart. 

" deep  on  his  front  engraven, 

Deliberation  sat,  and  public  care  : 
With  Atlantean  shoulders,  fit  to  bear 
The  weight  of  mightiest  monarchies." 

The  late  eulogists  of  Mr.  Webster  were  fond  of  com 
paring  him  with  Edmund  Burke  ;  but,  as  we  think, 
without  a  due  and  discriminating  appreciation  of  their 
respective  natures.  Webster  could  never  have  spoken 
the  speeches  which  grew  out  of  the  Warren  Hastings 
affair,  every  sentence  blazing  with  the  splendors  of  a 
gorgeous  rhetoric ;  nor  could  he  have  written  those 
burning  and  glowing  reflections  on  the  French  Revolu 
tion.  On  the  other  hand,  Burke  could  scarcely  have 
made  that  prodigious  extempore  reply  to  Mr.  Hayne, 
so  versatile,  satiric,  overwhelming  and  solemnly  elo 
quent.  Because  they  were  men  essentially  different  ; 
and  the  coupling  of  their  names  is  suggestive  rather  in 
the  way  of  contrast  than  of  agreement.  Webster  pos- 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     243 

sessed  talent,  but  Burke  genius.  Burke,  therefore,  was 
the  superior  in  imagination,  in  culture,  in  earnestness, 
and  in  moral  sensibility  ;  Webster  in  dialectics,  in  sim 
plicity  and  strength  of  style,  in  decorum  and  grave 
manly  debate.  The  vocabulary  of  Burke  was  more 
rich  and  gorgeous  ;  that  of  Webster  more  chaste,  terse, 
and  manageable.  Webster  was  pre-eminently  an  advo 
cate,  always  argumentative,  always  collected,  always 
addressing  himself  to  the  intellect,  or  to  the  feelings 
only  so  far  as  they  might  move  the  intellect ;  Burke 
was  a  poet  as  well  as  an  orator,  irritable  and  impetuous, 
and  operating  through  the  will  and  fancy  quite  as  much 
as  the  mind.  Where  Webster  reasoned,  Burke  philos 
ophized  :  where  Webster  was  serene,  equable,  ponder 
ous,  dealing  his  blows  like  an  ancient  catapult ;  Burke 
was  clamorous,  fiery,  multitudinous,  rushing  forward 
like  his  own  " whirlwind  of  cavalry."  The  one  was 
Doric  in  his  firmness  and  elegance,  the  other  Corinthian 
in  his  elaboration  and  ornament.  Webster  was  the 
Roman  temple,  stately,  solid,  and  massive  ;  Burke,  the 
Gothic  cathedral,  fantastic,  aspiring,  and  many-colored. 
The  sentences  of  Webster  roll  along  like  the  blasts  of 
the  trumpet  on  the  night  air ;  those  of  Burke  are  more 
like  the  echoes  of  an  organ  in  some  ancient  minster. 
Webster  advances,  in  his  heavy  logical  march,  and  his 
directness  of  purpose,  like  a  Caesarean  legion,  close, 
firm,  serried,  square  ;  Burke,  like  an  oriental  proces 
sion,  with  elephants  and  trophies,  and  the  pomp  of 
banners. 

It  is  implied  in  this  parallel  that  Webster  was  deficient 
in  imagination  :  he  was,  however,  not  destitute  of  it, 
seeing  that  no  man  can  be  an  orator  at  all  without  some 
degree  of  it ;  but  we  mean  to  say,  that  his  imagination 
fell  short  of  the  ample  dimensions  of  his  other  faculties. 
We  use  the  term  to  designate  that  power  of  which  poets 


2 44      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

are  "all  compact,"  which  melts  whole  worlds  of 
thought  into  a  single  phrase,  which  evokes  a  new 
universe  out  of  the  commonest  realities,  which  has  an 
instant  touch  and  feeling  of  all  the  subtle  analogies  of 
nature,  which  sees  into  the  heart  of  things,  and  which, 
whenever  it  speaks,  pours  itself  forth  in  language  full 
of  interfused  passion,  thought,  melody,  and  tears. 
Every  line  almost  of  Shakspeare  is  pregnant  with  it ; 
as  for  instance,  "  Our  little  life  is  rounded  by  a  sleep," 
on  which  Jean  Paul  says  he  always  meditated  when 
he  heard  it,  for  three  days.  Homer  exemplifies  it, 
when  the  descent  of  the  wrathful  Apollo  at  noon  is  com 
pared  to  the  coming  on  of  night ;  Dante,  too,  in  that 
sad  story  of  Francesca,  which  closes,  "that  day  we 
read  no  more  ;"  Byron,  in  his  "  starry  Galileo  ;"  and  our 
own  Bryant,  when  he  hears  in  the  domestic  hum  of  the 
bee  on  the  prairies  "  the  tread  of  the  advancing  multi 
tude  which  soon  shall  fill  the  borders."  Among  orators, 
Burke,  where  he  describes  Hyder  Ali,  in  his  retreats, 
meditating  vengeance  on  the  Carnatic,  as,  "hanging 
like  a  cloud  upon  the  declivities  of  the  mountains," 
gives  a  rare  instance  of  this  power;  and  so  does  Mr. 
Webster  in  this  passage  of  the  oration  on  the  Bunker 
Hill  Monument  :  "  Let  it  rise  till  it  meet  the  sun  in  its 
coming  :  let  the  earliest  light  of  the  morning  gild  it, 
and  parting  day  linger  and  play  on  its  summit."  Again, 
speaking  of  the  power  of  England,  he  says,  "Her 
morning  drum-beat,  following  the  sun  and  keeping 
company  with  the  hours,  circles  the  earth  daily  with  one 
continuous  and  unbroken  strain  of  martial  airs."  There 
are  also  examples  of  imaginative  power  in  his  allusion 
to  the  slave-trade  in  the  Plymouth  oration,  and  in  his 
description  of  the  murder  of  the  venerable  Mr.  White. 
But  it  is  rarely  that  he  rises  to  such  heights,  or  on 
occasions  of  intense  excitement  only,  when  he  Iran- 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     245 

scends  himself,  and  momently  catches  the  fine  madness 
of  the  poet.  In  general  we  do  not  discover  the  play  of 
this  faculty,  even  of  that  lambent  and  gentle  flashing 
out  of  it,  which  resembles  its  grander  displays,  as  the 
aurora  resembles  some  terrific  blaze  of  lightning. 

Nor  do  we  find  the  cultivation  of  Mr.  Webster  so  rich 
and  various  as  we  had  been  led  to  suppose  by  the 
admiration  of  his  followers.  Out  of  his  profession  he 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  an  extensive  reader.  A 
few  well-known  Latin  books,  the  poetry  of  Pope  and 
his  school,  who  were  the  fashion  in  his  youth,  the  his 
torical  plays  of  Shakspeare,  and  the  Old  Testament, — 
the  last  two,  it  must  be  admitted,  worlds  in  themselves, — 
were  his  chief  resources.  But  it  cannot  be  said — at  least 
it  is  not  made  manifest  in  his  published  works — that 
he  had  any  profound  or  critical  knowledge  of  English 
literature,  as  a  whole  ;  to  the  German,  Italian,  Spanish, 
and  French  literatures,  he  made  no  pretentions  ;  while 
his  classical  stores  were  obviously  quite  limited.  We 
do  not  discover  any  evidences,  at  the  same  time,  that  he 
was  well  instructed  in  any  of  the  sciences,  or  that  he 
possessed  any  controlling  love  for  the  fine  arts.  If  he 
had  been  a  reaper  in  those  fields,  the  rich  and  luscious 
juices  of  the  harvest  would  have  inevitably  exuded  into 
his  speech.  They  who  wander  through  groves  of 
bloom,  catch  the  Sabean  odors  in  their  dress,  and 
exhale  them  in  every  breath. 

In  respect  to  the  degree,  thoroughness,  and  variety  of 
their  culture,  indeed,  we  cannot  but  think  that  the  states 
men  of  foreign  nations,  especially  of  France  and  Eng 
land,  greatly  surpass  those  of  our  own  country. 
Furnished,  in  the  outset,  by  the  superior  discipline  and 
more  exacting  standards  of  their  schools,  with  a  more 
solid  education,  they  are  also  more  apt  to  carry  with 
them  into  the  duties  of  active  life  the  tastes  of  their 


246      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

scholastic  days.  A  literary  performance  of  some  sort,  a 
lecture,  a  poem,  a  memoir,  or  a  history,  becomes  their 
relaxation  from  the  fatigues  of  the  forum  or  the  bureau. 
In  France,  the  most  eminent  statesmen  are  better  known 
as  litterateurs,  as  Guizot,  Thiers,  Lamartine,  De  Tocque- 
ville,  etc.  ;  and  even  in  England,  where  literature,  as  a 
profession,  is  not  so  nobly  requited,  Lord  John  Russell 
writes  dramas  and  edits  biographies,  Gladstone  dis 
courses  of  Church  and  State,  the  Earl  of  Carlisle 
lectures,  and  Brougham  philosophizes,  experiments, 
and  disserts  on  Natural  Theology  and  Athenian  orators. 
But  who  of  our  statesmen,  saving  Everett,  Sumner,  and 
Legare,  to  whom  politics  seems  a  stray  visiting-place 
father  than  their  native  habitat,  has  taste  for  such  studies 
or  is  competent  to  borrow  grace  from  them  for  his 
severer  pursuits  ?  An  annual  address  before  some 
literary  society  or  mechanics'  institute,  is  generally  the 
limit  of  their  excursions  in  this  field,  while  the  barren 
ness,  tautology,  and  sophomorical  ornament  of  these 
occasional  displays,  are  dreary  evidences  that  they  are 
"not  to  the  manner  bom."  This  deficiency,  it  is  true, 
is  partly  incident  to  the  incessant  demands  of  our  active 
national  life,  but  is  owing  still  more,  we  suspect,  to  the 
want  of  a  real  appreciation  of  the  value  of  literature, 
science,  and  art,  among  our  public  men. 

But  if  Mr.  Webster  had  not  rifled  the  flower-gardens 
of  literature,  he  compensated  for  his  deficiencies,  in 
part,  by  the  possession  of  a  fine  natural  taste.  His 
modes  of  expression  are  always  neat,  correct,  and 
forcible.  Apt  words  aptly  chosen,  well  planned  and 
well  executed  sentences,  an  exquisite  clearness  of  state 
ment,  a  sober  chastity  of  figure,  a  round,  melodic, 
stately  rhythm,  sometimes  swelling  and  grand,  but 
never  grandiloquent,  are  the  every-day  beauties  of  his 
style.  He  is  even  remarkably  graceful  at  times,  and 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     247 

when  deeply  moved  by  his  subject,  a  sonorous  charm 
accompanies  the  full,  equable  flow  of  his  thoughts. 
No  painful  effort  is  apparent  in  him,  no  turgid  labor, 
no  gymnastic  contortions,  no  nervous,  spiteful,  moment 
ary  flashes — which  are  all  symptoms  of  weakness.  On 
the  contrary,  we  may  apply  to  him  one  of  his  own 
favorite  quotations,  and  say  that  he  is — 

Strong  without  rage,  without  o'erflowing,  full. 

In  this  respect,  indeed,  he  is  a  model  for  our  young 
orators  and  writers,  who,  if  they  would  become  really 
cogent  and  impressive,  must  chasten  their  extravagance 
with  somewhat  of  his  moderation,  and  temper  their 
fervors  with  somewhat  of  his  dignity.  It  is  a  part  of 
our  life  to  be  excessive  in  action  and  ambitious  in 
phrase,  and  we  have  not  learned  that  the  suaviter  in 
modo  is  quite  as  effective  as  the  forliter  in  re. 

As  an  orator,  however,  Webster's  greatest  defect  was 
the  want  of  a  thoroughly  profound  and  delicate  moral 
sensibility  ;  of  that  noble,  yet  lively  susceptibility  to 
suffering  and  wrong,  which  makes  the  world's  woes  and 
hopes  our  own,  and  our  own  those  of  the  world, — 
which  raises  us  to  the  heights  of  heroism,  while  it  softens 
us  into  the  sweet  tenderness  of  woman, — which  inspires 
generous  devotion  and  the  sternest  spirit  of  self-sacrifice, 
at  the  moment  when  the  heart  swells  with  emotion,  and 
the  lips  tremble,  and  the  eye  is  suffused  with  tears — and 
which,  when  we  come  to  the  utterance  of  it,  gushes  over 
into  deep  pathos,  or  a  ''cry  that  shivers  to  the  tingling 
stars.'"'  Mr.  Webster  shows  a  certain  sort  of  religious 
sentiment,  but  it  is  not  deep  nor  acute,  nor  apparently  so 
much  an  original  inspiration,  as  something  learned  from 
the  schools.  He  uses  it  as  a  material  of  his  art,  as  one 
of  the  graceful  and  effective  appliances  of  rhetoric, 


248      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

giving  elevation  to  the  tone  of  his  thought,  but  it  never 
bursts  out  as  an  irrepressible,  overwhelming  impulse, 
carrying  both  speaker  and  listener  along  in  a  whirl 
of  agitation.  His  prevalent  tone  is  cold,  subdued, 
almost  impassive.  Because  of  this  want  of  moral  senti 
ment  he  had  no  fine  lyric  enthusiasms.  No  one,  we 
suspect,  was  ever  made  a  martyr  by  his  persuasion  ;  few 
have  ever  wept  over  his  pages  or  under  the  sound  of  his 
voice  ;  though  many,  we  have  no  doubt,  have  been 
often  lifted  by  him  into  higher  ranges  of  thought  and  a 
loftier  patriotism.  He  moved  men  by  the  commanding 
power  of  his  intellect,  but  not  by  the  appealing,  pathetic, 
melting  utterances  of  the  heart.  He  never  impresses 
us  as  a  man  "  terribly  in  earnest,"  but  always  bears  about 
with  him  the  conscious  air  of  an  advocate,  of  one  who 
pleads  powerfully  for  his  cause,  but  for  the  reason  that 
it  is  his  cause,  and  not  that  it  is  the  truth  of  God.  In 
reading  Mr.  Calhoun,  though  you  differ  from  every 
word  he  utters,  though  you  see  that  he  is  imposing  on 
his  own  mind,  you  are  still  persuaded  of  his  intense 
conviction  of  what  he  says,  of  his  willingness  to  stake 
life  and  honor  on  each  sentence,  of  his  deep,  ineradi 
cable,  personal  interest  in  the  success  of  his  case.  But 
no  one  feels  that  Mr.  Webster  would  break  his  heart 
over  a  defeat,  or  swoon  with  joy  at  an  unexpected 
triumph. 

It  is  probably  because  he  carried  this  advocate  spirit 
into  his  public  life,  that  he  achieved  so  little  as  a  man 
of  action.  His  successes  were  those  of  the  lawyer.  He 
expounded  the  Constitution  as  only  Marshall  before  him 
had  done,  and  he  conducted  diplomatic  disputes  with 
ability  ;  but  no  original  measures  signalized  his  name. 
The  measures  that  he  supported  have  been  condemned 
by  the  larger  wisdom  of  the  people,  whilst  those  he 
opposed  have  been  incorporated  into  the  settled  policy 


Works  of  American  Statesmen.     249 

of  the  nation.  He  was,  therefore,  not  too  great  to  be 
popular,  as  some  of  his  foolish  friends  assert,  but  not 
great  enough — nor  sufficiently  original,  unselfish,  and 
earnest. 

But,  in  spite  of  every  objection  that  a  nicer  criticism 
raises,  the  nation  may  well  be,  as  it  is,  and  long  will  be, 
proud  of  the  fame  of  Daniel  Webster.  His  eminent 
qualities  as  an  advocate  would  have  distinguished  him 
as  primus  inter  illustres  in  any  age.  Had  he  lived  in  the 
time  of  Demosthenes,  his  name  would  have  come  down 
to  us  as  no  unworthy  compeer  of  that  father  of  elo 
quence  ;  had  he  pleaded  in  the  Roman  forum,  he  would 
have  shared  the  plaudits  of  its  listeners  with  all- 
accomplished  Tully  himself;  and  in  the  most  brilliant 
era  of  British  oratory,  he  would  have  added  a  fifth  to 
the  glorious  four  who  thundered  in  the  Commons. 
Our  young  country  then  may  well  cherish  whatever  was 
good  or  great  in  the  inheritance  of  his  fame. 

We  must  now,  however,  draw  these  desultory  thoughts 
to  a  close.  In  doing  so,  let  us  express  our  pleasure 
in  the  practice  which  obtains  more  and  more,  of 
collecting  the  works  of  our  conspicuous  men.  Let 
us  also  suggest  to  younger  statesmen,  the  new  account 
ability  to  literature  to  which  they  will  be  hereafter  bound 
over.  With  the  vision  of  a  book  in  the  distance  to 
transmit  their  folly  or  wisdom  to  larger  audiences  and 
severer  judges  than  they  are  apt  to  find  in  the  Senate, 
they  should  be  encouraged  or  warned  to  a  more  careful 
husbandry  of  their  powers.  A  more  glorious  trust  than 
is  put  into  their  hands  cannot  well  be  conceived.  Our 
old  revolutionary  statesmen,  who  laid  the  foundations  of 
empire,  have  long  since  passed  away  ;  their  immediate 
successors,  who  conducted  it  through  the  stormy  tran 
sitions  of  its  formative  period,  with  the  single  exception 
of  Benton,  are  likewise  gone ;  and  a  new  race  is  ad- 


25o      Works  of  American  Statesmen. 

vanced  to  the  vacant  places.  But  they  advance  also  to 
weightier  responsibilities  and  broader  duties.  Our 
country  swells  with  such  velocity  in  greatness  of  extent 
and  greatness  of  power,  that  the  very  statistics  of  its 
growth  startle  us,  as  the  figure  of  her  future  breaks, 

"  Like  a  comet,  out 
Far-splendoring  the  sleepy  realms  of  night" 

In  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  young  Republic  will 
have  attained  a  dominion  greater  than  that  of  Rome  at 
the  zenith  of  her  strength,  or  of  England  in  the  time  of 
Pitt,  standing  the  first  among  the  nations.  Every  Ameri 
can  is  elated  with  the  consciousness  of  this  near  reality, 
but  is  he  equally  alive  to  the  nobler  duties  that  it  im 
poses  upon  him  ?  Do  our  statesmen  reflect  that  they 
legislate,  not  for  the  meagre  twenty  millions  of  this  age, 
but  for  the  hundred  millions  of  an  age  just  at  hand  ? 
Oh  !  what  men  they  should  be  to  be  equal  to  their  des 
tinies  !  What  a  deep  base  of  generous  qualities  they 
should  lay  for  the  superstructure  of  great  deeds  to 
come  !  what  inflexible  integrity  of  character  they  should 
cultivate,  what  comprehensive  sympathies  cherish,  what 
exalted  purposes  demand  of  Heaven  !  With  what 
moderation,  what  wisdom,  what  fearless  independ 
ence,  what  utter  hatred  of  wrong,  what  an  aching  love 
of  justice,  they  should  strive  to  comprehend  their  po 
sition — to  thrust  aside  with  utter  loathing  and  disgust 
the  petty  ends  of  party,  and  to  rise  with  "a  clear  fore 
sight,  not  a  blindfold  courage,"  toward  the  summits  of 
their  great  office ! 


COMTE'S    PHILOSOPHY.* 

j|T  is  some  ten  or  twelve  years  since,  entering 
the  bookstore  of  Wiley  &  Putnam,  in  Broad- 
i&Sjttil  way,  we  took  from  the  shelves  four  large  and 
dingy  volumes,  printed  in  French,  and  bound  with 
coarse,  rose-colored  paper,  purporting  to  be  a  treatise 
on  the  entire  circle  of  the  sciences.  The  first  page  we 
opened  upon  contained  a  statement  of  the  imperfections 
of  analytical  geometry,  and  we  said,  "Here  is  a  con 
ceited  fellow,  who  believes  himself  capable  of  reforming 
the  mathematics."  But  on  reading  further,  we  discov 
ered  that  he  was  an  earnest  partisan  of  the  mathematics, 
carrying  his  respect  for  them,  indeed,  so  far  as  to  assert, 
in  speaking  of  the  progress  of  their  astronomical  appli 
cations,  that  "  the  heavens  declare  the  glory" — not  of 
God,  as  the  good  old  Bible  says,  but  "of  Hipparchus, 
Kepler,  and  Newton."  An  audacious  thinker,  at  any 
rate,  we  thought  to  ourselves,  and  strove  to  penetrate  a 
little  deeper  into  his  book.  Repulsed  at  first  by  the 
novelty  and  boldness  of  his  remarks,  we  were  at  the 
same  time  held  fast  by  a  certain  assurance  of  move 
ment.  As  he  passed  along  the  dizzy  heights  of  the 
most  adventurous  speculation,  we  were  convinced  that 

*  The  Positive  Philosophy  of  Augusts  Comte  :   Freely  translated  and 
condensed  by  HARRIET  MARTINEAU.      2  vols. 
From  Putnam '$  Monthly,  June,  1854. 


252  Comtes  Philosophy. 

no  ordinary  thinker  held  us  in  his  hands  ;  and  when, 
toward  the  close  of  the  work,  we  came  full-face  upon 
the  announcement  of  a  wholly  new  science,  for  which 
all  other  sciences  were  but  preparatives — the  Science 
of  Society — the  fact  jumped  in  too  nicely  with  the  tenor 
of  our  own  previous  researches  and  hopes,  to  allow  any 
dictates  of  economy  to  hinder  us  from  becoming  the 
owner  of  those  shabby-looking  volumes. 

We  read  them,  not  with  avidity,  because  they  were 
written  quite  too  much  in  "the  dry-light,"  as  Bacon 
calls  it,  for  that,  and  yet  with  a  deep  though  forced  at 
tention.  It  was  clear,  from  the  very  outset,  that  the 
.author  was  a  novel  and  independent  thinker  ;  his  great 
instrument  of  a  mind  moved  along  with  the  regularity, 
though  by  no  means  the  velocity,  of  a  machine,  im 
pressing  one,  as  it  drew  him  on,  with  a  feeling  that  he 
might  be  supposed  to  have  when  caught  up  by  the 
gearing  of  some  monster  corn-mill  or  cotton  factory. 
No  pleasant  episodes  of  the  imagination  adorned  the 
way  ;  no  scintillations  of  fancy  sparkled  like  fire-flies 
around  it ;  no  gentle  play  of  the  affections  warmed  it  ; 
but  a  stern  and  relentless  Intellect,  marching  remorse 
lessly  forward,  was  treading  down  our  dearest  hopes,  and 
crushing  out  the  noblest  and  sweetest  sensibilities,  and 
dragging  us  with  it  to  its  infernal  goal. 

As  we  became  more  familiar  with  our  demon,  how 
ever,  we  found  that  he  was  not  altogether  so  bad  as  he 
seemed  ;  a  silver  lining  of  humanity  was  now  and  then 
turned  from  out  the  folds  of  his  dark  frown  ;  he  was 
clearly  very  much  in  earnest,  and  impelled  by  an  un 
questionable  love  of  truth.  Speaking  ill  of  nobody, 
threatening  nobody,  he  pursued  his  own  silent  and 
impassive  way  among  the  stars,  and  through  the  depths 
of  the  earth,  and  amid  the  busy  haunts  of  men,  intent 
only  on  his  purpose,  which,  the  more  it  was  pondered, 


Comte  s  Philosophy.  263 

grew  to  be  more  and  more  dignified,  noble,  and  be 
nevolent.  We  finally  dismissed  all  fears  of  our  guide, 
and  honestly  set  to  work  to  discover  what  he  was  at. 
When  we  add  that  those  volumes  were  the  "Positive 
Philosophy"  of  Comte,  since  so  widely  known  as  a  pro 
found  and  comprehensive  scientist,  the  intelligent  reader 
of  this  day  will  need  no  further  explanation  of  either 
our  surprise  or  our  admiration. 

It  is  always  a  momentous  discovery — this  of  a  new 
and  really  great  thinker — of  a  man  who  discusses  with 
consummate  familiarity  and  ease  the  highest  problems 
of  science  ;  and  we  naturally  turned  to  the  Records  to 
see  what  the  world  had  made  of  him — to  ascertain  his 
whereabout,  as  well  as  to  compare  our  secluded  esti 
mate  of  his  rank  with  that  of  the  accredited  standards 
of  opinion  and  criticism.  Alas  !  we  searched  in  vain 
for  any  notice  of  him.  The  Reviews  of  France  and 
England,  though  noisy  enough  in  their  praises  and 
dispraises  of  the  little  tadpoles  of  literature,  had  no 
word  for  this  Leviathan  ;  learned  societies  the  world 
over,  eager  as  they  are  sometimes  to  rescue  their  insig 
nificance  from  oblivion,  by  blazoning  the  name  of 
whoever  has  won  a  momentary  glory  in  deciphering 
the  wrappages  on  an  old  mummy,  or  discovering  a 
nation  in  Africa  one  degree  nearer  the  monkey  than 
any  before  known,  were  unconscious  of  his  name ; 
and,  in  private  circles,  few  persons  whom  we  met 
had  ever  heard,  or,  if  they  had  heard,  knew  anything 
definite  of  the  star  which  had  risen  with  quite  porten 
tous  light  upon  our  small  horizon.  At  last,  however, 
we  were  told  that  we  might  find  in  the  Edinburgh  Re 
view  of  1838 — many  years  after  Comte's  first  book  was 
published,  and  eight  after  the  completion  of  the  last — 
a  notice  of  the  Positive  Philosophy,  written  by  Sir  David 
Brewster,  which  showed  plainly  enougli  that  Sir  David 


254  Comics  Philosophy. 

had  failed  to  get  even  a  glimpse  of  the  peculiarity  of 
the  system.  When  Whewell,  too,  published  his  ';'  Phi 
losophy  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,"  it  was  evident  that 
he  had  read  Comte,  but  was  either  afraid  or  not  honest 
enough  to  own  it ;  and  the  first  public  recognition  of 
him  of  any  importance  we  found  in  the  Logic  of  John 
Stuart  Mill,  who  borrows  largely  from  him,  but  without 
the  meanness  of  concealment.  Indeed,  no  attempt,  as 
we  are  aware,  has  yet  been  made  toward  an  elaborate 
and  impartial  judgment  of  Comte,  save  in  a  series  of 
•able  articles  published  in  the  Methodist  Quarterly  Review 
of  this  city,  where  the  writer,  though  disagreeing  with 
many  of  his  conclusions,  yet  frankly  and  admiringly 
confesses  his  merits.  Morell's  "Philosophy  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century"  has  a  superficial  account  of  Comte's 
system,  and  Professor  De  Saisset  has  written  something 
about  him  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  which  we 
have  not  seen. 

This  uniform  neglect  of  Comte,  during  the  quarter 
of  a  century  in  which  he  had  been  laboriously  working 
out  his  views,  struck  us  as  strange,  particularly  as  con 
temporary  science  contained  not  a  few  direct  appropria 
tions  of  his  labors.  We  tried  to  account  for  it,  on  one  or 
the  other  of  three  suppositions  :  we  argued  that  either  his 
works  were  intrinsically  unworthy  of  study,  or  that  their 
departures  from  the  accepted  and  reigning  opinions 
were  so  flagrant  as  to  excite  a  silent  contempt  for  them, 
or  that  the  range  and  comprehensiveness  of  their  topics 
lifted  them  quite  above  the  ordinary  apprehensions  and 
intellectual  sympathies  of  the  age. 

Yet,  on  reflection,  we  soon  saw  that  neither  of  these 
solutions  could  be  entirely  satisfactory.  It  was  obvious, 
at  a  glance,  that  those  works  were  worthy  of  study,  as 
their  marked  originality  and  power,  their  logical  co 
herence,  their  dignity  of  manner,  and  the  importance 


Comte  s  Philosophy.  255 

of  the  results  at  which  they  aimed,  abundantly  proved. 
A  rational  and  consistent  classification  of  the  sciences, 
on  the  basis  of  nature,  and  the  construction  of  a  new 
science,  destined  to  become  the  queen  and  crowning 
glory  of  all  other  sciences,  were  projects  which,  even 
if  they  had  been  unskilfully  carried  out,  nevertheless 
deserved  the  most  serious  attention.  It  was  no  disposi 
tion,  then,  we  were  persuaded,  to  pooh-pooh  Comte 
which  had  left  him  to  obscurity.  Nor  was  it,  again, 
the  offensive  nature  of  his  conclusions  ;  for,  hostile  as 
these  were  to  existing  prejudices,  they  were  no  more  so 
than  the  systems  of  Fichte,  Schelling,  and  Hegel,  whose 
speculations  have  gone  the  circuit  of  the  globe.  If  he 
was  atheistical,  they  were  pantheistical  ;  and  we  had  yet 
to  learn  that  the  one  error  was  more  acceptable  to 
•  orthodoxy  than  the  other.  Meanwhile,  it  was  patent 
that  the  theories  of  Comte,  though  profound  and  com 
prehensive,  and  marked  by  great  logical  severity,  were 
not  difficult  of  apprehension.  They  could  scarcely  be 
called  abstruse ;  they  contained  few  neologisms,  did 
not  abound  in  hard  words,  while  in  their  general  aims 
they  were  addressed  to  a  prevailing  character  of  the 
present  era — its  physical  or  materializing  tendency. 
There  was,  then,  more  reason,  or  at  least  as  much  rea 
son,  why  Comte  should  have  been  well  known,  as  that 
Cousin,  Hegel,  or  Kant  should  be. 

In  the  end,  two  considerations  occurred  to  us,  as  more 
likely  to  explain  the  little  attention  he  had  received. 
The  first  was,  the  acknowledged  indisposition  of  scien 
tific  men  to  enter  into  large  or  general  views,  absorbed 
as. they  were  in  the  study  of  details,  and  distrustful  as 
they  were  of  all  applications  of  the  inductive  method, 
save  the  most  elementary  and  simple.  The  habit  of 
petty  analysis,  which  has  been  so  "victorious"  in 
physics,  had  finally  succeeded  in  conquering  its  masters, 


256  '  Comics  *  Philosophy. 

so  that  your  natural  philosopher  was  quite  as  much 
afraid  of  deserting  it,  for  higher  and  synthetic  general 
izations,  as  a  slave  is  to  rise  against  his  keeper.  He 
looked  upon  the  "  theorizer,"  consequently,  as  a 
monster,  and  was  glad  to  get  quit  of  him  as  soon  as 
possible.  Comte  could  expect  no  hospitality  from  this 
class.  Then,  again — a  second  reason  for  neglecting 
him,  even  among  those  capable  of  general  views,  was, 
that  the  reigning  science  couid  not,  in  consistency  with 
its  own  principles,  deny  the  validity  of  his  method, 
while  to  admit  his  conclusions,  would  be  flying  directly 
into  the  face  of  the  reigning  theology.  There  was  a 
two-faced  allegiance  to  be  maintained  by  the  Scientists — • 
one  of  consistency,  and  the  other  of  respectability  ;  and 
we  can  readily  understand  why  it  was  thought  best,  in 
the  dilemma,  to  say  as  little  as  need  be  about  Comter 
lest  the  secret  sympathy  of  science  should  be  exposed 
on  one  side  by  a  futile  attempt  to  contemn  him,  or  lest, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  frowns  of  the  Church  should  be 
incurred  by  an  open  proclamation  of  sympathy.  In  a 
word,  Comte  had  been  more  faithful  to  the  spirit  and 
method  of  modern  science,  as  it  is  generally  conceived 
by  scientific  men,  than  they  had  dared  to  be  themselves, 
because  of  their  theological  timidity.  His  conclusions 
were  the  logical  outgrowth  of  their  premises  ;  but 
while  they  persistently  held  to  the  premises,  they  cau 
tiously  avoided  the  conclusions.  A  choice  between 
Science  and  Faith  was  laid  upon  them,  but  inasmuch  as 
they  could  relinquish  neither,  nor  reconcile  the  two, 
they  found  discretion  the  better  sort  of  valor.  They 
retired  from  the  field  rather  than  join  battle. 

Thus  physicists  and  metaphysicists  were  alike  disdain 
ful,  expecting  neither  profit  nor  entertainment  from 
those  lumbering  octavos  of  a  poor  Parisian  teacher  of 
mathematics,  whose  style  was  not  the  most  attractive  in 


Comtes  Philosophy.  2$j 

the  world,  and  whose  matter  required  close  and  con 
tinued,  if  not  subtle  study. 

Comte,  however,  is  at  length  famous.  He  has  been 
taken  under  the  especial  patronage  of  Miss  Martineau — 
"  philosopher  Harriet,"  as  our  laughing  Howadji  has  it— 
and  of  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes,  who  last  year  published  an  out 
line  of  his  works,  under  the  title  of  "Comte's  Philoso 
phy  of  the  Sciences."  His  books  are  available  in  toler 
able  English  ;  the  diminutive  leaders  of  small  coteries 
begin  to  jabber  of  the  virtues  of  integral  calculus ; 
metaphysics  and  theology  are  growing  decidedly  unfash 
ionable  ;  and  young  men  and  women  will  soon  be  as 
tonished  that  they  could  ever  have  entertained  such  anti 
quated  notions  as  those  of  God  and  Infinity,  or  ever 
supposed  anything  to  have  had  a  beginning, — as  all 
beginnings  ex  necessitate  are  supernatural, — or,  will  ever 
have  an  end,  as  all  ends  in  the  flux  and  play  of  shadows 
are  at  best  but  problematical.  Phenomena  and  the 
laws  of  phenomena,  which  are  themselves  phenomenal, 
are  the  sole  gospel  which  the  reason  can  comprehend  or 
our  hearts  revere  ;  and  this  poor  universe,  at  once  dis 
embodied  and  soulless — though  we  have  deemed  it  all 
along  the  substantialest  of  dwelling-places — is  in  danger 
of  becoming  a  stupendous  magic-lantern,  but  with  no 
one  with  within  it,  or  behind  it,  to  show  the  pictures. 

It  may  not  be  useless,  then,  for  several  reasons,  to 
undertake  a  brief  survey  of  Comte  and  his  claims.  This 
we  shall  proceed  to  do,  premising,  however,  that  we 
have  no  strong  hope  of  administering  much  consolation 
either  to  his  extravagant  admirers  or  his  more  bigoted 
enemies. 

The  first  question  with  a  philosophy  always  is,  what 
it  aims  to  do ;  and  here  we  must  say  that  Comte's 
pretensions  are  of  no  mean  extent.  He  intends  a  sys- 
temization  of  all  human  knowledge,  a  reconstruction 


258  Comtes  Philosophy. 

of  the  human  understanding,  and  the  determination, 
through  these,  of  the  true  order  and  evolution  of  human 
society.  His  ambition  takes  rank  with  that  of  Spinoza 
in  his  Traclatus,  with  Bacon's  in  his  Instauraiio  Magna, 
and  with  Fourier's  in  his  Unite  Universelle,  only  falling 
short  of  the  reach  of  Swedenborg's,  which  includes  the 
economy  of  the  heavens  and  the  hells  as  well  as  of  the 
earth.  Nor  does  the  execution  of  his  plan  prove  him  a 
wholly  unworthy  compeer  of  those  aspiring  men.  With 
more  knowledge  than  Fourier,  and  a  soberer  judgment 
than  Spinoza,  he  is  less  than  Bacon  only  in  that  mascu 
line  strength,  rich  wit,  and  fruity  imagination,  which 
are  the  unrivalled  charms  of  the  great  Chancellor.  But 
he  differs  mainly  from  all  these  reformers  of  thought  in 
the  rigid  bounds  he  has  set  to  the  province  of  knowl 
edge.  They,  almost  without  exception,  "leaping  the 
walls  of  time  and  space,"  have  scaled  the  heavens  of  the 
infinite  ;  yet  he  will  hear  of  nothing  but  the  actual  and 
the  conditioned.  They  have  endeavored  to  penetrate 
into  causes  and  essences,  while  he  admits  nothing  but 
phenomena.  They  have  believed,  with  all  the  rest  of 
mankind,  in  substance,  but  he  believes  only  in  appear 
ances.  In  short,  he  calls  his  philosophy  the  "Positive 
Philosophy,"  because  it  avoids  all  impalpable  realms, 
and  is  real,  useful,  certain,  definite,  and  organic  ;  or,  as 
he  in  one  place  expresses  it,  "good  sense  systema 
tized." 

I.  The  first  fundamental  principle  of  it,  then,  is  a 
determination  of  the  limits  of  knowledge,  which  it  as 
sumes  is  confined  to  the  perception  of  phenomena,  and  their 
invariable  relations.  Absolute  knowledge,  it  is  affirmed, 
is  an  impossibility,  the  perception  of  things  in  themselves, 
as  it  is  sometimes  termed,  a  chimera.  The  exclusive 
function  of  the  mind  consists  in  observing  the  appear 
ances  of  things  and  co-ordinating  their  relations  of  ex- 


Comics  Philosophy.  269 

istence  or  succession.  When  we  have  determined  what 
a  thing  is,  i.  e.,  how  it  stands  related  to  other  things,  as 
an  existing  fact  or  a  sequence,  we  have  exhausted  the 
intelligible  sphere.  We  cannot  tell  whence  it  is,  nor  why 
it  is,  but  simply  how  it  is,  or  that  it  is  invariably  con 
nected  by  certain  resemblances  or  differences  with  other 
things,  or  by  a  certain  order  of  priority  or  posteriority,  to 
other  things.  W7e  cannot  say  that  it  is  a  substance,  a 
being,  a  cause,  an  essence,  but  only  a  phenomenon, 
which  exists  and  continues  in  certain  uniform  modes. 
All  researches  into  the  supposed  causes  of  that  phenom 
enon,  whether  natural  or  supernatural,  are  consequently 
illegitimate,  an  endeavor  after  the  unattainable,  a  pur 
suit  of  shadows  and  dreams.  All  faiths,  opinions,  aspi 
rations,  etc.,  not  susceptible  of  being  reduced  to  these 
observed  relations,  transcend  the  powers  of  the  intellect, 
and  may  be  dismissed  as  illusions,  or,  at  best,  as  mere 
transitional  and  infantile  expedients,  helping  the  mind 
on,  while  it  is  learning  to  discern  its  true  beat. 

This,  we  say,  is  Comte's  starting-point,  and  it  be 
comes  us  to  analyze  it,  before  advancing  further.  We 
will  admit  that  all  knowledge  is  relative; — /'.  e.,  in  a 
double  sense,  first,  as  to  its  objects,  which  could  not  be 
things  unless  they  were  finited  or  distinguished  from 
each  other  by  sensible  differences;  and  second,  as  to 
it's  powers,  which  is  a  mere  relation  of  our  sensitive 
organization  to  nature,  whereby  one  is  revealed  in  the 
other.  Things  are  in  virtue  of  their  relativity  ;  for  if 
they  were  not  relative,  they  would  be  absolute,  and  so 
indistinguishable  as  things,  inappreciable  to  the  senses, 
and  of  course  unknowable. 

Our  sensitive  experience,  consequently,  must  be  the 
basis,  the  occasion,  the  material  of  all  knowledge.  We 
do  not  bring  with  us,  when  we  are  born,  a  solitary  iota 
of  thought,  except  what  comes  to  us  from  our  relations 


260  Comtes  Philosophy. 

to  the  medium  in  which  we  are  born.  Everything  has 
to  be  learned  by  us,  and  that,  too,  in  the  slowest 
way.  Chickens  and  puppies,  as  soon  as  they  break  the 
shell,  or  open  their  eyes,  have,  as  Swedenborg  says,  a 
complete  science  of  their  lives  ;  the  former  will  run 
about  to  pick  up  worms,  and  the  latter  to  lap  milk, 
as  confidently  on  its  first  as  on  its  last  day  ;  but  a  human 
baby  does  not  know  enough  for  some  years  to  keep 
itself  from  starving  to  death.  It  has  to  be  taught  all 
things.  It  is  a  mere  capacity  of  knowing,  and  a  mere 
inclination  to  love,  and  nothing  more.  Experience 
awakens  its  sensations,  builds  up  its  imagination,  de 
velops  its  reason,  kindles  its  desires,  and  creates  its 
sciences.  In  other  words,  our  existence,  being  phe 
nomenal,  is  constructed  by  our  experience, — is  but 
an  extension  and  envelopment  of  nature, — a  part  and 
parcel  of  nature, — its  finer  outgrowth,  its  crowning  pro 
duct  and  flower.  But  man,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by, 
is  more  than  this  ;  he  is  more  than  a  simple  animal  and 
intellectual  existence  ;  he  is  a  self-hood  or  personality, 
and  therefore  a  spiritual  being.  The  phenomena  with 
which  he  is  conversant,  or  may  become  conversant,  are 
not  merely  physical  or  natural,  but  spiritual.  His 
world  is  one  of  affection,  thought,  faith,  as  well  as  of 
sensation.  A  denizen  of  time  and  space,  he  yet  con 
ceives  of  that  which  is  beyond  all  time  or  space. 

Comte  is  right,  therefore,  in  assuming  that  we  can 
know  nothing  out  of  the  sphere  of  our  experience,  or,  in 
other  words,  which  does  not  come  through  our  phenom 
enal  organization  ;  so  that  all  a  priori  notions  of  what 
things  are,  apart  from  what  we  feel  or  see  them  to  be, 
are  gratuitous  and  idle.  But  he  is  wrong  in  the  infer 
ence,  that  we  cannot  properly  believe  what  we  do  not 
know.  Knowledge  is  not  the  equivalent  or  measure  of 
being.  We  know  sensible  facts,  and  their  relations, 


Comtes  Philosophy.  261 

but  we  believe  truths  or  propositions  which  transcend 
those  facts  ;  we  know  changes,  but  we  believe  in  causes  ; 
we  know  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  but  we  believe  in 
man  ;  we  know  the  relations  of  difference  which  dis 
tinguish  things,  but  we  believe  in  a  unity  which  is  the 
ground  or  support  of  their  distinction.  We  know  the 
finite,  the  conditioned,  the  multiple,  the  changeable, 
but  we  believe  in  the  infinite,  the  unconditioned,  the 
absolute,  and  the  permanent,  not  as  contradictory  or 
antagonistic  to  the  former,  but  as  contained  in  them  ; 
not  as  natural  or  phenomenal,  but  as  rational  or  spiritual. 
Every  step  that  our  minds  take  within  the  sphere  of 
experience  itself,  or  beyond  the  first  intimations  of  sense, 
is  a  belief — well  or  ill  supported,  and  not  a  knowledge. 
In  popular  language,  we  are  accustomed  to  speak  of 
our  opinions  as  what  we  know  ;  but  strictly,  they  are 
only  what  we  opine,  with  more  or  less  fixity  of  assent. 
They  are  faiths  accredited  to  us  by  certain  evidences. 
We  say  that  we  know  the  truths  of  mathematics,  the 
principles  of  astronomy,  the  laws  of  chemistry,  the  dic 
tates  of  morals,  etc.,  but  we  have  only  a  conviction  of 
them,  founded  upon  our  reasonings,  which  reasonings 
are  only  various  logical  processes  for  producing  Faith. 
Neither  the  results  arrived  at,  nor  the  processes  them 
selves,  fall  within  the  cognizance  of  the  senses.  They 
are  rationally  discerned — i.  e.,  they  are  rationally  dis 
cerned  by  those  who  investigate  them  and  authenticate 
them  for  themselves  ;  but  the  larger  part  of  mankind 
are  satisfied  to  take  them  upon  the  testimony  of  others. 
Perhaps  one  man  in  ten  millions  of  Christendom  has 
demonstrated  the  theory  of  gravitation  for  himself,  all 
the  rest  believing  it  because  they  have  been  so  taught. 
Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  this  distinction  is  merely 
technical,  for  it  is  fundamental  and  controlling,  and 
cuts  to  the  very  quick  of  the  Positivist  pretensions. 


262  Comics  Philosophy. 

"Truths  are  known  to  us  in  two  ways,"  says  John  Stuart 
Mill,  who  is  good  scientific  authority;  "some  are 
known  to  us  directly  and  of  themselves  ;  some  through 
the  medium  of  other  truths  :  the  former  are  the  sub 
jects  of  intuition  or  consciousness"  (which  is  knowledge 
proper);  "the  latter  are  the  subject  of  inference" 
(which  is  properly  Belief).  "  Whatever  is  known  to  us 
by  consciousness  is  known  beyond  possibility  of  ques 
tion ;  what  one  sees  and  feels,  whether  bodily  or  men 
tally,  one  cannot  but  be  sure  that  one  sees  and  feels  ;  no 
science  is  required  for  establishing  such  truths  ;  no  rules 
of  art  can  render  our  knowledge  of  them  more  certain 
than  it  is  in  itself."  But  the  truths  inferred  from  these 
truths,  or  inferred  in  any  way,  may  be  rightly  or  wrongly 
inferred,  are  contingent  upon  the  legitimacy  of  tlue 
process  by  which  they  are  reached,  and  are  therefore 
not  known,  but  simply  believed.  That  belief  may 
reach  the  solidity  of  the  most  absolute  intuition,  ac 
cording  to  the  nature  and  degree  of  the  evidence  by 
which  it  is  supported,  but  it  is  none  the  less  a  belief 
and  knowledge  only  by  a  popular  extension  of  the  term 
knowledge.  Even  in  practical  life, — in  our  every-day 
concerns,  —  in  the  endless  ramifications  of  business,  we 
walk  as  much  by  Faith  as  by  Knowledge,  and  we  de 
pend  as  completely  upon  the  truths  that  we  simply  be 
lieve  as  we  do  upon  those  we  are  supposed  to  know. 
Social  existence,  indeed,  would  be  impossible  were  it 
not  so, — any  existence,  in  short,  above  that  of  the 
animal. 

The  question  of  philosophy,  therefore,  does  not,  as 
it  is  commonly  stated,  refer  to  the  validity  of  our  knowl 
edge, — which,  being  commensurate  with  our  sensible 
experience,  the  first  fool  can  determine  as  well  as  the 
last  philosopher,-*-but  to  the  validity  of  our  beliefs. 
Accepting  the  vast  variety  of  credences,  on  which  the 


Comte  s  PJiilosophy.  263 

whole  business  of  society,  its  trades  as  well  as  its  sciences 
and  religions,  proceeds,  what  ground  is  there  for  each  ? 
In  what  way  are  they  related  to  our  sensible  experience, 
and  how  can  that  experience  be  made  serviceable  to 
them  ?  Which  are  unsupported,  which  are  illusions, 
which  are  worthy  of  trust  ?  Especially,  what  are  we  to 
make  of  our  transcendent  ideas?  All  the  world,  for 
instance,  at  every  period  of  the  world,  has  professed  a 
belief  in  that  which  is  perfect  and  unconditioned,  which 
cannot  be  bounded  by  the  senses,  which  the  senses  are 
ignorant  of,  which  is  invisible  to  the  eye,  and  inaudible 
to  the  ear,  but  how  is  it  to  be  explained  ?  Must  we 
wink  it  out  of  sight,  or  may  we  refer  it  to  a  life  within 
us  which  is  supersensuous,  which  is  a  window  of  the 
soul,  if  we  may  so  express  it,  opening  into  God  and  the 
absolute,  as  the  senses  are  windows  of  the  soul,  open 
ing  into  nature?  Philosophy,  we  say,  is  called  upon 
to  answer, — not  merely  to  systematize  what  we  know, 
but  to  explain  what  we  believe  and  hope.  Philosophy 
deals  with  all  the  fundamental  questions  of  human  ex 
istence.  Is  there  any  truth  ?  and  what  criterion  of  it 
have  we  ?  Is  there  any  reality?  and  how  are  we  to  dis 
tinguish  it  from  phantasm  ?  Whence  the  universal 
order  that  we  observe,  and  whither  does  it  tend  ? 
Theology,  metaphysics,  science  itself,  each  gives  us  its 
own  responses  to  these  questions  ;  but  are  these  so 
many  groping  guesses,  or  satisfactory  solutions  ?  It  is 
easy  to  say  that  such  problems  are  insoluble,  but  who 
can  prove  that  blank  and  awful  negative  ?  It  is  easy  to 
raise  the  barrier  of  the  "Unknowable,"  but  by  what 
authority  are  reason  and  revelation  restricted  ?  WTho  is 
wise  enough  to  fix  the  last  limits  to  the  capacity  of  re 
finement  and  expansion  in  the  human  powers  ;  who 
knows  what  we  may  or  may  not  know  in  the  gradual 
evolutions  of  spiritual  being  ?  What  depths  may  we  not 


264  Comtek  PJiilosophy. 

yet  penetrate  (say,  by  new  generalizations  of  the  known), 
what  heights  may  we  not  yet  scale  ? 

Now,  Comte  is  quite  right  in  considering  the  rela 
tions  of  phenomenal  nature,  the  facts  furnished  to  us 
by  the  senses,  and  digested  by  reason,  as  the  starting- 
place  of  the  sciences  ;  but  he  is  wrong  in  restricting 
philosophy  to  this  natural  plane.  He  is  right,  in  the 
first  point,  because  phenomenal  nature  is  the  continent 
or  base  of  all  truth,  in  which  it  resides  as  in  its  body  ; 
but  he  is  wrong  in  the  second  point,  inasmuch  as  it 
excludes  the  deeper  truths,  which  are  the  soul  of  that 
body.  Let  us  illustrate.  The  twenty-six  letters  of  the 
alphabet  contain  the  whole  of  Shakspeare,  but  how 
wretched  would  be  the  commentator  who  should  con 
fine  his  attention  to  the  names  of  the  letters,  or  to  the 
spelling  of  a  few  syllables,  or  to  the  construction  of  a 
few  sentences  even,  and  not  ascend  to  the  higher  com 
binations  of  the  thoughts  !  It  is  indispensable  to  know 
the  letters  and  the  words,  in  order  to  understand  Shaks 
peare,  but  the  letters  and  the  words  are  not  Shakspeare. 
They  are  only  instrumental  to  Shakspeare  ;  they  are  the 
external  collocation,  of  which  he  is  the  interior  signifi 
cance — nay,  more,  they  are  the  condition  of  his  exist 
ence,  and  the  ladders  by  which  we  climb  to  him,  but 
they  are  not  the  immortal  spirit  of  the  man,  which  is 
alone  worth  our  seeking.  Hence  the  care  with  which 
we  investigate  his  text ;  but  should  we  not  despise  a 
scholar  who  could  spend  his  life  in  the  pursuit  of  the 
text,  while  he  neglected  the  meaning  which  alone  im 
parts  to  the  text  its  glory  ? 

So  Science  begins  with  the  sensible  sphere,  because 
it  is  the  letter  and  text  of  truth,  but  it  ascends  from 
that,  by  its  rational  processes,  to  the  mental  or  spiritual 
sphere,  which  is  the  ground  or  meaning  of  the  former, 
giving  it  existence  and  reality.  Science  is  nature  no 


Comtes  Philosophy.  265 

longer  seen  by  the  eyes,  but  by  the  reason.  Let  it  be 
observed,  however,  that  in  ascending  from  the  senses, 
as  we  have  termed  it,  we  do  not  recede  or  separate 
from  nature  ;  we  do  not  run  away  into  a  ghostland  of 
abstractions,  but  we  simply  look  through  nature's  su 
perficial  aspects  or  integuments,  into  its  realities,  or 
rather  into  its  rationalities,  into  its  intellectual  sub 
stances  and  ends,  which  constitute  it,  make  it  consistent 
and  significant,  and  show  it  to  be  a  glorious  mirror  of 
our  own  souls.  If  Science  halts,  therefore,  at  the  thresh 
old  ;  if  it  regards  nature  as  a  thing  of  superficial  dimen 
sions  only  ;  if  it  dallies  with  the  outside  shows,  refusing 
to  penetrate  the  inward  meaning,  it  misses  the  most 
precious  part  of  the  entertainment.  It  sees  the  vast 
mechanism,  the  prodigious  apparatus,  the  great  gilt 
Candlesticks  of  the  heavens,  and  the  four  sapphire  walls, 
and  the  multitudes  that  walk  therein,  but  the  Divinity 
of  the  magnificent  temple,  who  is  the  light  and  heat 
and  glory  of  it,  it  cannot  behold  ! 

Science,  we  repeat,  cannot  be  too  "positive"  in  the 
study  of  phenomena,  cannot  be  too  accurate  in  its  re 
searches  or  comprehensive  in  its  generalizations  ;  cannot 
tell  us  too  plainly  what  the  actual  forms  and  sequences 
of  the  universe  are  ;  but  it  does  this,  not  for  the  sake  of 
the  phenomena,  which  are,  in  themselves,  dead  and 
passive  surfaces,  obeisant,  mechanical,  vehicular,  but 
for  the  inner  worlds  of  rational,  civil,  moral,  and 
spiritual  uses  which  they  contain.  It  is  because  they 
are  an  expression,  a  representative,  a  bodying  forth  of  a 
more  real  life,  the  vast  depository  of  spiritual  forces  in 
action,  a  theatre  of  an  ascending  series  of  wisdom  and 
goodness,  the  supporting  bed  of  the  eternal  marriage  of 
love  and  truth,  and  the  perpetual,  ever-renewed  miracle 
of  divine  creation,  that  they  deserve  our  elaborate  study 
and  care.  As  the  plane  on  which  all  effects  are 


266  Comics  Philosophy. 

wrought  out,  we  cannot  know  too  intimately  the  great 
leading  facts  of  Experience  ;  but  to  rest  in  those  facts 
is  to  abandon  reason  to  a  barren  nominalism,  to  close 
the  eyes  of  the  soul,  and  shut  out  God  from  his  own 
universe. 

II.  Comte's  second  fundamental  principle  is,  that 
each  of  our  leading  conceptions,  each  branch  of  our  knowl 
edge,  passes  successively  through  three  different  theoretical 
conditions — the  Theological  or  fictitious,  the  Metaphysical  or 
abstract,  and  the  Scientific  or  positive.  In  other  words, 
the  human  mind,  by  its  nature,  employs,  in  its  progress, 
three  methods  of  philosophizing,  the  characters  of 
which  are  essentially  different,  and  even  radically  op 
posed — viz.,  the  theological  method,  the  metaphysical, 
and  the  positive.  "Hence  arise,"  he  adds,  "three 
philosophies,  or  general  systems  of  conception,  of  the 
aggregate  of  phenomena,  each  of  which  excludes  the 
other."  The  first  is  the  necessary  point  of  departure 
for  the  human  understanding,  and  the  third  its  fixed  and 
definitive  state,  while  the  second  is  only  transitional.* 

In  the  theological  stage,  the  human  mind,  seeking 
the  essential  nature  of  beings,  the  first  and  final  causes 
(the  origin  and  purpose)  of  all  effects — in  short,  abso 
lute  knowledge — supposes  all  phenomena  to  be  pro 
duced  by  the  immediate  action  of  supernatural  agents. 
In  the  metaphysical  state,  which  is  only  a  modification 
of  the  first,  the  mind  supposes,  instead  of  supernatural 
powers,  abstract  forces,  substantive  principles,  veritable 
entities,  inherent  in  nature,  and  capable  of  producing  a 
diversity  in  phenomena.  But  in  the  final  or  positive 
state,  the  mind  has  given  over  the  vain  search  after  ab 
solute  notions,  such  as  the  origin  and  destination  of  the 
universe,  and  the  causes  of  phenomena,  and  applies 

*  Miss  Martineau's  Abstract,  vol.  i.,  c.  i. 


Comte  s  Philosophy.  267 

itself  to  the  study  of  their  laws, — that  is,  their  invariable 
relations  of  succession  and  resemblance. 

Comte  adds,  that  the  theological  state  reached  its 
highest  perfection,  when  it  substituted  the  providential 
action  of  a  single  Being  (monotheism),  for  the  varied 
operation  of  numerous  divinities  (fetichism  and  poly 
theism)  which  had  before  been  imagined.  In  the  same 
way,  in  the  last  stage  of  the  metaphysical  system,  men 
substitute  one  great  entity,  Nature,  as  the  cause  of  all 
phenomena,  for  the  multitude  of  entities  which  they 
at  first  supposed.  And  thus  the  Positive  system  will  reach 
its  ultimate  perfection  (if  such  perfection  can  be  hoped 
for)  in  the  representation  of  some  single  general  law 
(gravitation,  for  instance),  as  the  unity  of  all  particular 
phenomena. 

Before  entering  upon  an  examination  of  this  alleged 
"  law  of  the  three  stages/'  let  us  remark  a  moment  the 
singular  nomenclature  in  which  it  is  expressed.  "The 
ological,"  "metaphysical,"  and  "positive"  are  terms 
that  have  no  sort  of  co-relation  with  each  other ;  neither 
of  affinity  or  contrast.  They  are  arbitrary  designations, 
and  therefore,  as  the  reader  will  find  out  if  he  attempts 
to  pursue  the  study  of  Comte,  somewhat  ambiguous  and 
confused.  Theology  is  stretched  a  good  deal  from  its 
native  meaning  when  it  is  made  to  cover  the  lowest  sort 
of  fetichism,  as  well  as  the  mere  devilism  of  much  early 
superstition.  So,  again,  metaphysics,  which  is  now 
commonly  restricted  to  intellectual  and  moral  philoso 
phy,  is  identified  by  Comte  with  Ontology,  or  the  sci 
ence  of  being,  though  he  sometimes  recurs  to  the 
former  sense.  But  his  use  of  the  word  "  positive"  is 
the  most  curious  reversion  of  terms.  Among  the  old 
speculators,  such  as  the  schoolmen,  and  in  Bacon,  Spi 
noza,  Leibnitz,  and  Descartes,  even  down  to  Kant,  posi 
tive  knowledge  always  means  primitive,  irreducible,  ne- 


268  Comics  Philosophy. 

cessary  truth,  or  that  which  is  derived  from  intuitive  per 
ception,  as  distinguished  from  that  which  is  obtained 
by  observation  and  experiment :  but  Comte,  rejecting 
the  former  kind  of  knowledge,  appropriates  the  term 
to  that  which  originally  it  was  used  to  oppose.  This, 
however,  by  the  way,  for  what  he  really  means  is  clear 
enough. 

It  is  the  instinct  of  childhood  to  personify  everything, 
— to  drench  its  whole  outward  existence  in  the  hues  of 
its  persona]  feelings,  .and  to  invest  every  stone,  and  tree, 
and  shadow  with  a  vague  mysterious  life  ;  but  in  youth, 
as  the  reflective  or  intellectual  powers  are  developed, 
we  begin  to  question  these  creatures  of  the  imagination, 
to  strip  them  of  their  personal  individuality,  and  to 
refer  them  to  a  dead  external  mechanism,  which  we  call 
nature  ;  and  then,  finally,  we  investigate  their  actual 
properties,  that  we  may  turn  them  to  use,  in  furthering 
the  practical  purposes  of  existence.  The  savage  sees  in 
the  lightning  the  glances  of  an  offended  deity,  whom 
he  propitiates  by  offerings  :  when  more  enlightened,  he 
regards  it  as  a  destructive  and  unmanageable  agent,  of 
which  he  is  afraid  ;  but  when  more  enlightened  still,  he 
calls  it  electricity,  and  renders  it  harmless  by  an  iron 
rod.  The  savage  considers  an  epidemic  as  a  direct 
infliction  of  the  gods,  or,  as  our  American  Iroquois 
thought,  a  great  serpent  that  lived  in  the  pools.  He 
learns  by  experience  that  it  may  be  generated  by  the 
pools  and  marshes,  and  calls  it  not  a  serpent,  but  a 
malignant  nature  :  then,  a  little  further  advanced  in 
knowledge,  he  connects  it  with  a  mysterious  "Provi 
dence,"  till  the  man  of  science  teaches  him  that  it  is  a 
simple  consequence  of  appreciable  causes,  and  institutes 
sanitary  regulations  to  prevent  its  recurrence.  Thus, 
in  regard  to  all  other  phenomena,  the  progress  of  our 
intelligence  is  marked  by  the  progress  which  it  makes 


Comte  s  Philosophy.  269 

in  referring  them,  from  arbitrary  wills,  or  independent 
and  inscrutable  causes,  to  intelligible  and  invariable 
laws. 

Now,  this  general  fact  we  admit,  but  we  are  not  pre 
pared  to  characterize  it  precisely  as  Comte  does,  nor  to 
surrender  it  to  the  same  inferences.  He  treats  the  theo 
logical  and  metaphysical  states  as  exclusively  provisional, 
the  positive  state  as  definite  or  final.  Now,  we  regard 
them  all  as  alike  provisional,  and  included  in  the  same 
general  law  of  progress.  The  idea  of  Deity,  and  the 
idea  of  Cause,  are  not  infantile  conceptions,  which  it  is 
the  function  of  science  to  supersede  ;  but  they  are  per 
manent,  controlling,  ineradicable  instincts,  which  it  is 
the  function  of  philosophy  to  illustrate,  purify,  and 
complete.  In  other  words,  the  phenomenal  manifes 
tations  of  these  great  ideas,  their  appearances  in  history, 
are  the  successive  stages  by  which  the  reason  of  the  race 
ascends  from  a  gross  sensualism,  or  a  blind  confusion 
of  God  and  nature,  to  the  spiritual  perception  of  a 
living,  creative,  and  all-sustaining  unity  of  life.  They 
are  the  process  of  the  mind's  growth,  by  which  it  is 
gradually  enfranchised  from  its  primitive  subjection  to 
nature,  into  its  final  mastery  of  nature  and  conjunction 
with  God. 

Thus  the  theological  conceptions  exhibit  the  gropings 
of  religious  feeling  for  a  unitary  life,  which  will  explain  all 
the  vast  variety  of  phenomenal  lives.  So  the  metaphysical 
and  positive  conceptions  exhibit  the  gropings  of  thought 
for  a  causative  principle,  which  will  explain  all  the  vast 
concatenations  of  phenomenal  order.  Our  Humanity 
is  ever  in  a  process  of  education,  is  growing  out  of  its 
infancy  into  its  manhood,  and  these  theological,  meta 
physical,  and  scientific  systems  are  the  tutors,  by  whose 
assistance  it  attains  its  majority.  They  are  not,  there 
fore,  radically  antagonistic  to  each  other,  but  co-oper- 


2/o  Comtes  Philosophy. 

ative  from  distinct  spheres,  the  one  preparing  the  heart, 
and  the  other  the  intelligence,  for  the  whole  man's  final 
assertion  of  his  independence  and  freedom. 

In  respect  to  the  theological  credences  of  our  race, 
it  is  evident  that  their  historical  development  has  not 
exhausted  the  conception  of  God,  but  refined  it  more 
and  more  from  all  mere  finite  adjuncts,  and  filled  it  out 
to  an  ideal  completeness.  From  fetichism,  the  first  rude 
personification  of  stocks  and  stones,  through  Sabeism, 
or  the  worship  of  the  stars,  and  the  Polytheistic  deifica 
tion  of  the  great  powers  of  nature,  to  the  Monotheism 
of  Mohammed  and  the  Jews,  there  is  an  almost 
measureless  progress.  So  in  Monotheism  itself,  begin 
ning  with  the  conception  of  God  as  the  special  and 
avenging  protector  of  a  nation,  of  Jewry  or  Islam,  and 
ending  with  it  as  the  impartial  judge  of  all  the  earth, 
there  is  an  equal  rise  in  the  purity  and  dignity  of  the 
thought.  The  conception  becomes  less  and  less  natural, 
i.  e.,  less  and  less  limited  and  conditioned,  and  more 
and  more  humane,  until  it  rises  to  the  highest  expres 
sion  which  it  has  yet  received,  the  orthodox  theism  of 
the  Church,  in  which  God  is  the  merciful  and  universal 
Father,  and  profoundly  interested  in  the  fortunes  of  the 
human  soul.  But  he  is  still  a  God  ab  extra,  according 
to  this  faith,  a  God  above  and  separate  from  humanity, 
until  a  more  sympathetic  insight  into  the  life  of  Christ 
(such  as  we  get  in  Swedenborg),  reveals  him  as  the 
Divine  Humanity,  or  the  essential  unity  of  God  and 
man. 

Again,  the  metaphysical  philosophy  of  our  race 
has  been  a  gravitation  of  thought  toward  a  similar 
end.  At  first  cosmological,  explaining  the  universe 
by  a  great  controlling  force  or  phusis  external  to  it,  and 
then  physical,  ascribing  each  particular  effect  to  its  par 
ticular  entity,  residing  in  it  as  a  kind  of  physical  soul, 


Comics  Philosophy.  271 

metaphysics  has  gradually  relieved  itself  of  the  domi 
nation  of  nature,  discharging  her  phenomena  of  every 
characteristic  save  the  principle  of  Law.  Arrived  at 
this  stage,  it  is  called  Positivism,  which,  however  it  may 
disclaim  all  metaphysical  parentage,  is  still  a  phase  of 
metaphysics  ;  for  it  only  substitutes  law  for  cause  or 
entity,  perpetually  speaking  of  "the  laws  controlling 
phenomena,"  "the  laws  which  subject  properties," 
etc.,  as  if  laws  were  an  external  and  authoritative 
imposition, — in  which  sense  they  are  just  as  metaphysi 
cal  as  any  of  the  entities  of  the  schoolmen. 

The  distinctive  character  of  Positivism,  for  example, 
is  the  conception  of  the  invariableness  or  immutability 
of  the  Laws  of  Nature.  But  this  is  a  metaphysical  con 
ception  as  a  whole,  and  each  of  its  leading  terms  is 
metaphysical,  and  the  first  of  them  is  absolute  as  well  as 
metaphysical,  implying  as  it  does,  an  eternal,  fixed, 
unconditional  impossibility  of  change.  We  are  no 
where  told,  it  is  true,  nor  is  it  very  clear,  whether  this 
impossibility  of  change  is  a  mathematical,  a  moral,  or 
a  physical  impossibility ;  it  is  represented  only  as  a 
kind  of  Fate  or  Destiny. 

Again,  the  second  term  of  this  pet  phrase,  Law,  is  a 
metaphysical  expression,  borrowed  from  jurisprudence, 
where  it  means  the  command  of  a  superior,  and  which 
it  attributes  to  the  facts  and  sequences  of  the  material 
world.  Even  the  third  term  in  the  formula,  or  "Nature," 
in  the  mouths  of  the  strictest  scientists,  often  means  an 
entity  external  to  our  thought,  in  which  the  sum  of 
phenomena  is  supposed  to  inhere.  What  is  there  more 
metaphysical  in  the  arke  of  the  ancient  lonians,  in  the 
atoms  of  the  atomists,  in  the  quiddities  of  the  school 
men,  in  the  animism  of  Stahl,  or  in  the  vital  principle  of 
the  later  physioligists,  than  in  the  electricity,  galvanism, 
magnetism,  and  caloric  of  modern  science.  We  ven- 


272  Comtes  Philosophy. 

ture  to  say  that  ninety-nine  of  every  hundred  of  the 
writers  on  these  branches  of  research  give  as  much 
objective  validity  to  their  fluids  and  affinities  as  ever 
Scotus  did  to  his  entities  or  plastic  forces. 

Mr.  Lewes,  one  of  the  leading  teachers  of  Positivism, 
has  noted  this,  and  says  :  "The  conception  implied  in, 
or  suggested  by,  the  phrase  'Laws  of  Nature/  is  the 
last  and  most  refined  expression  of  the  metaphysical 
stage  of  speculation  ;  it  replaces  the  ancient  principle  ; 
it  is  the  delicate  abstract  entity  superadded  to  phenom 
ena."  It  is  something  which  "coerces  the  facts,  and 
makes  them  to  be  what  they  are, "  "a  more  subtle,  a 
more  impersonal  substitute  for  the  supernatural  power, 
which  in  the  theological  epoch  was  believed  to  super 
intend  all  things."  "If  the  savage  says  it  is  a  demon 
who  directs  the  storm,  does  not  the  man  of  science  say 
it  is  a  law  which  directs  it  ?  These  two  conceptions, 
are  they  not  identical  ?"  Not  entirely,  we  answer,  be 
cause  the  last  is  more  rational  than  the  first,  and  brings 
us  nearer  to  a  true  theory  of  the  universe  ;  but  both 
spring  from  the  same  source,  the  irresistible  desire  of  the 
mind  to  go  behind  the  phenomenal  and  the  relative  to 
the  rational  and  constitutive.  Mr.  Lewes  proposes  to 
relieve  himself  by  the  employment  of  the  word 
"methods." 

But  will  it  be  any  more  possible  to  satisfy  the  philo 
sophical  instinct  with  "  methods"  than  with  "  laws,"  or 
with  "  entities"  or  "  gods?"  No,  for  what  that  instinct 
demands  is  the  intrinsic  reason  of  things,  the  why  as 
well  as  the  what  and  the  how.  "  He  is  a  poor  lawyer," 
says  Cicero,  "who,  knowing  all  the  extant  statutes  of 
the  realm,  does  not  know  the  reason  of  the  law."  Thus, 
behind  the  theorems  of  the  mathematics,  there  is  a 
philosophy  of  mathematics;  behind  all  the  decom 
positions  and  recompositions  of  chemistry,  a  philosophy 


Comtes  Philosophy.  273 

of  chemistry ;  behind  all  the  sciences,  in  short,  a 
science  of  sciences  to  which  they  are  only  subservient. 
Why  are  they,  those  sciences, — i.  e.,  for  what  end  are 
they  ?  Or,  in  plain,  popular  language,  what  is  their 
use  9  which  is  again  the  same  thing  as  to  ask,  what  is 
their  cause  ;  for  as  the  End  for  which  any  thing  is,  deter 
mines  its  existence,  its  form,  its  relations  to  other  things, 
its  rank  in  the  orders  and  series  to  which  it  belongs — 
that  end  must  be,  disguise  it  as  we  may,  its  formative 
principle,  its  fundamental  idea,  its  soul.  "Are  you 
there,  old  truepenny  ?"  Behold,  the  Use  of  a  thing,  in 
the  last  analysis,  is  its  rational  cause,  and  Positivism 
does  not  say  the  final  word  of  science  !  It  may  have  an 
eminent  function,  in  determining  what  things  are,  what 
the  forms  and  relations  of  phenomena  are,  in  teaching 
inquirers  to  stick  to  the  inquiry  in  hand,  and  when  they 
are  investigating  a  thing,  not  to  run  off  into  a  wild-goose 
chase  after  something  else  ;  but  having  done  that,  it 
has  only  prepared  materials.  The  great  work  has  yet 
to  be  done.  Comte's  own  attempt  to  show  that  all  the 
sciences  are  made  for  the  last  science,  or  the  science  of 
man — 2.  e.,  his  attempt  to  deduce  the  end  or  use  of  the 
sciences — is  an  ample  confession  of  this  very  truth,  and 
an  abandonment  of  the  what  is,  for  the  why  it  is.  But, 
reaching  this  question  of  the  Why,  we  come  at  once  and 
peremptorily  upon  the  great  truth  which  he  himself 
educes — that  all  the  sciences,  2.  e.,  that  all  the  realms  of 
creation,  look  to  the  aggrandizement  of  man  ;  that  all 
their  arrangements,  all  their  efforts,  are  subservient  to 
his  development,  are  all  accommodated  to  his  growth, 
all  culminate  in  his  supremacy.  Thus,  once  more,  we 
are  brought  by  the  slow  evolutions  of  science  to  the 
same  landing-place  in  which  we  were  left  "by  the  theo 
logical  series, — 2.  e.,  to  man  as  the  Lord  and  Master  of 
Nature,  and  consequently  one  with  God. 


2/4  Comtes  Philosophy. 

There  is  an  obvious  fallacy  in  the  suggestion  that 
these  "three  states"  are  either  exclusive  of  each  other,  or 
regularly  successive  in  a  direct  line  of  development  ; 
for  they  have  all  existed  concurrently,  from  the  begin 
ning  of  the  world,  and  often  in  the  same  nation  and  the 
same  mind,  at  the  same  time.  The  veriest  barbarian, 
who  sees  a  fetish  in  a  stone,  still  believes  that  if  it  falls 
on  his  head  it  will  give  him  a  hurt, — thus  proving  his 
Positivism,  so  far  forth,  or  his  sense  of  nature's  invari 
able  laws.  The  most  flourishing  period  of  Greek 
polytheism  was  precisely  the  time  when  the  Greek 
schools  were  most  devoted  to  independent  metaphysical 
studies.  Who  were  more  theological  and  more  meta 
physical  at  the  same  time  than  the  schoolmen  ? 
Besides,  is  not  the  very  study  of  any  .subject,  whether 
theological  or  metaphysical,  a  quiet  assumption  of 
Positivism — i.  e. ,  does  it  not  proceed  upon  the  suppo 
sition  that  the  laws  of  the  mind  at  least  are  invariable  ? 
Could  there  be  any  conclusion  without  such  a  pre 
supposition?  The  "three  states,"  consequently,  are 
successive  in  this  respect  alone,  that  at  a  particular 
period  one  of  them  preponderates,  while  the  others  are 
held  in  abeyance.  They  are  in  no  sense  radically  exclu 
sive  of  each  other,  for  a  man  may  investigate  phenomena 
positively,  and  believe  at  the  same  time  in  that  which  is 
ultra-phenomenal,  or  rather  intra-phenomenal.  All  that 
sound  science  requires,  and  what  we  take  to  be  the  real 
meaning  of  Positivism,  is  this  :  that  in  the  natural 
order,  a  man  should  stick  to  the  facts  of  his  case,  that 
he  should  not  generalize  beyond  those  facts;  but  it  does 
not  follow  from  this  that  he  has  no  right  to  construct  a 
spiritual  philosophy  of  those  facts,  or  to  refer  them  to 
some  more  radical  theory  of  the  universe  after  their 
phenomenal  relations  are  ascertained.  All  the  Positivists 
in  the  world,  and  to  the  end  of  time,  will  not  succeed 


Comte s  Philosophy. 

in  eradicating  this  notion  of  a  super-sensual  Reason  of 
Things  from  the  human  mind.  They  may  correct  the 
misapplications  of  it,  made  in  the  immaturity  of 
the  race,  as  the  progress  of  Science  has  done  and  is 
doing  perpetually  ;  but  they  will  never  persuade  men  to 
relinquish  it, — for  the  reason,  that  it  proceeds  from  an 
ineradicable  instinct,  is  implied  in  the  fundamental 
"  categories"  of  all  understanding,  and  imperatively 
demanded  by  the  yearnings  of  the  heart. 

If  we  have  rightly  apprehended  the  matter,  then 
Comte's  law  of  "  the  three  stages"  is  a  very  inadequate 
statement  of  the  principle  of  development.  Theology 
and  metaphysics  do  not  terminate  in  the  elimination  of 
Science,  but  they  bear  entire  reference  to  the  elimina 
tion  of  Man.  Positivism  itself  is  no  less  a  propaedeutic 
than  either  of  the  others,  and  only  helps  to  carry  on 
the  problem  to  its  final  solution  by  a  more  compre 
hensive  philosophy.  Theology,  all  drenched  and 
dripping  at  the  outset  in  fetichisms,  struggles  to  read 
the  riddle  of  the  universe,  onward  through  sabeisms, 
polytheisms,  and  monotheisms,  until  it  finally  ceases  to 
conceive  of  God  at  all  under  sensible  conditions,  or 
as  a  finite  and  outward  being,  and  rises  to  the  thought 
of  his  infinite  inward  personality.  So,  Metaphysics 
and  Science,  after  torturing  nature  for  the  secret  of  her 
existence,  after  striving  to  explain  the  world  by  a  fate 
superior  to  the  gods  ;  by  the  fortuitous  rencontres  of  in 
finite  atoms  moving  freely  through  space  ;  by  a  plastic, 
all-controlling  mundane  soul  ;  by  number,  by  chem 
istry,  by  electricity,  by  physiology,  and  lastly  by  a  tre 
mendous  phantasm  of  "phenomena  and  laws,"  are 
pointed  away  from  nature  herself,  by  her  innumerable 
fingers,  to  him  for  whom  all  her  suns  have  risen  and 
set,  all  her  fields  waved,  and  all  her  oceans  rolled. 

Now  the  law  of  "the  three  stages"  means  to  express 


276  Comtes  PJiilosophy. 

this  succession  of  theological  and  philosophical  schemes, 
but  does  so  in  an  incomplete  and  one-sided  way.  Its 
proper  formula  would  be,  that  man  stands  in  respect  to 
all  the  objects  of  his  belief  or  thought  in  three  great 
orders  of  relation  :  he  is  related  (i)  to  the  invisible  or 
spiritual  world,  (2)  to  nature,  and  (3)  to  his  fellow-man  ; 
each  of  which  dominates  him  in  turn,  during  the  process 
of  his  development ;  but  his  education  consists  in  the 
successive  reduction  of  each  to  unity.  Neither  theology 
nor  metaphysics,  rightly  conceived,  are  transitory  ;  they 
abide  in  their  ultimate  principles,  and  change  only  in 
their  successive  superficial  forms  ;  they  have  never  been 
deserted  or  left  behind  in  the  course  of  our  progress  ; 
they  still  flourish,  and  will  flourish  till  at  last  they  meet 
and  are  reconciled  in  that  Divine  Philosophy  which 
has  ever  been  their  .aim.  Growing  pari  passu  with  man, 
they  rocked  the  cradle  of  his  infancy,  and  will  live  to 
witness  the  glory  of  his  crowning  manliness,  through 
Christ. 

Before  quitting  this  branch  of  the  subject,  we  cannot 
but  protest  against  the  tone  of  disparagement  in  which 
Comte  and  his  followers  are  led  by  their  system  to 
speak  of  all  theological  and  speculative  studies, — as  if 
they  were  a  hopeless  imbecility,  as  contemptible  as 
they  were  fruitless.  Granting  that  they  do  not  possess 
that  precious  faculty  of  prevision,  that  capability  of 
verification  by  experiment,  which  is  the  advantage  of  the 
natural  sciences,  and  the  application  of  which  has  led 
to  such  astonishing  discoveries  in  modern  times,  they 
may  still  be  not  without  their  value.  It  pertains  to  the 
difference  in  the  very  nature  of  these  studies  to  produce 
different  kinds  of  results  ;  and  to  be  tested,  therefore, 
by  different  criteria.  No  conceivable  doctrine  of  God 
is  likely  to  enable  us  to  predict  eclipses  ;  no  ontological 
or  psychological  truth  or  falsehood  will  help  or  hinder 


Comte  s  Philosophy*  277 

the  construction  of  a  steam-engine ;  neither,  on  the 
other  hand,  does  natural  science  help  us  much,  when 
we  ask  ourselves  the  question  of  the  dying  Roman  Em 
peror,  ''Whither  art  thou  going,  oh  my  soul?"  In 
fact,  the  most  "victorious  analysis"  has  not  yet  proved 
that  we  have  a  soul,  nor,  with  all  its  fertile  previsions, 
enabled  us  to  look  into  our  immortal  destiny.  Yet 
there  are  matters  quite  as  interesting  to  us  as  the  bi 
nomial  theorem  or  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes. 
Besides,  the  disability  as  to  present  uses,  with  which 
the  speculative  sciences  are  reproached,  is  one  that  is 
common  to  nearly  all  the  higher  spheres  of  thought. 
We  know  scarcely  more  of  morals,  politics,  history, 
art,  than  we  do  of  theology  or  metaphysics, — perhaps 
not  so  much,— but  are  we  to  drop  them,  on  that  ac 
count,  as  chimerical  and  illusory  ?  Who,  for  example, 
is  going  to  tell  us  by  what  laws  of  nature,  by  what  uni 
formities  of  co-existence  and  sequence  Homers,  Dantes, 
and  Shakspeares  are  produced  ?  Shall  we  not  listen  to 
Geniu-s,  till  some  Scientist  shall  have  probed  the  secret 
of  his  genesis,  and  told  the  precise  amount  of  salt,  phos 
phorus,  oxygen,  and  what  not,  may  have  gone  to  his 
composition  ?  Shall  we  not  believe  in  him,  though  we 
may  not  comprehend  him  ? 

Admitting,  further,  that  no  positive  results  have  been 
attained  in  either  theology  or  metaphysics,  and  that  we 
are  as  far  now  from  satisfactory  conclusions  as  they 
were  in  the  days  of  Thotmes  or  Anaximander,  will  it 
be  contended  that  the  mere  process  of  research  has  not 
been  accompanied  by  the  most  prodigious  advantages 
for  the  human  mind  ?  From  the  fetichism  of  a  Zooloo 
to  the  mysticism  of  a  Fenelon,  there  is  a  broad  interval 
of  thought  and  feeling,  and  though  one  may  be  no 
nearer  to  the  real  truth  than  the  other,  is  nothing  gained 
to  our  race  by  the  difference  ?  Between  the  cosmogony 


278  Comtes  Philosophy. 

of  a  Thales  and  that  of  a  Plato  there  is  an  immense 
gap,  but,  if  equally  untrue,  are  they  also  equal  imbecili 
ties,  unworthy  of  a  rational  mind's  regard  ?  Has  Des 
cartes,  has  Leibnitz,  has  Kant,  has  Swedenborg  done 
nothing  that  we  may  not  now  derisively  dismiss,  as  the 
merest  puerility  and  phantom-mongering  ?  If  we  mis 
take  not,  Comte  himself  inscribes  some  of  these  illus 
trious  names  as  saints  in  his  new  calendar  of  scientific 
religion.  He  admits  them,  though  not  signalized  as 
the  discoverers  of  much  positive  truth,  among  the 
benefactors  of  mankind  ;  but  why  does  he  do  so  ?  Be 
cause  he  felt,  that  as  a  mere  gymnastic  of  the  intellect, 
apart  from  every  question  of  the  amount  of  truth  they 
contained,  the  works  of  these  men  are  of  incalculable 
value.  In  this  view,  indeed,  what  work  of  simple 
science,  that  has  been  written  since  the  beginning  of 
the  world,  is  so  capable  of  building  up,  informing,  en 
larging,  disciplining  the  mind  of  man,  as  the  Dia 
logues  of  Plato,  all  metaphysical  as  they  are,  or  even 
those  grand  and  sweeping  dissertations  of  Hegel  on 
Logic,  Esthetics,  and  Religion,  all  compact  of  non 
sense,  by  every  scientific  estimate?  No  one  doubts 
that  a  prodigious  amount  of  silliness  has  been  labori 
ously  achieved  by  the  speculative  thinkers,  that  the 
hopeless  task  of  the  Dana'ides  of  dipping  up  water  in 
seives  has  often  been  revived  by  them,  that  endless 
volumes  of  moonshine  have  been  carefully  bottled  away 
for  future  enlightenment,  but,  along  with  all  these  pain 
ful  and  preposterous  efforts,  they  have  made  no  less 
prodigious  displays  of  intellectual  vigor  and  acumen, 
that  can  never  wholly  die  out  of  the  interest  and  grati 
tude  of  mankind.  For  Science  itself,  which  despises 
the  questions  of  the  schools,  cannot  proceed  far  in  its 
own  legitimate  path  without  hitting  its  head,  and  fre 
quently  to  the  damage  of  its  brains,  against  the  very 


•  Comics  Philosophy.  279 

topics  it  so  much  derides.  Let  it  push  its  researches  to 
the  ultimate  lurking-place  of  the  phenomenal,  let  it 
master  all  facts,  and  co-ordinate  them  into  a  final  fact ; 
let  it  synthesize  till  it  have  reached  the  last  synthesis  of 
all,  or  prove  that  no  such  finality  is  possible  ;  and  still 
the  question  will  come,  whether  the  total  order  be,  so 
far  as  it  goes,  a  blind  fate  or  an  intelligent  God,  whether 
an  undecipherable  entity  or  a  pervading  wisdom, 
whether  a  mute  principle  of  Law  or  a  living  principle 
of  Love. 

But  let  us  add,  for  the  assurance  of  the  Positivists, 
should  they  ever  come  to  adopt  the  latter  alternative,  to 
have  no  fear  that  the  laws  of  the  universe,  under  this 
new  reign  of  God,  will  be  administered  in  any  more 
"arbitrary"  or  "variable"  manner,  or  that  it  will  be 
any  more  difficult  to  foresee  the  certain  action  of  phe 
nomena  in  the  future,  than  under  their  own  most 
superlative  rule.  Indeed,  deprived  as  we  are  by  Posi 
tivism  of  all  intelligent  and  kindly  causes,  on  which, 
amid  the  terrifying  vicissitudes  of  human  affairs,  our 
perturbed  spirits  may  rely,  we  are  sometimes  haunted 
with  a  vague  suspicion  that  this  huge  necessity  called 
Law,  may  itself  take  a  turn  for  the  worse  by  and  by  ; 
that  instead  of  showing  itself  on  the  side  of  good,  as 
Cornte  contends  it  does,  it  may  show  itself  on  the  side 
of  evil,  and  then  what  is  to  become  of  us  ?  We  greatly 
prefer,  therefore,  to  consider  law  as  the  perpetual  pres 
ence  of  a  sovereign  Life,  of  one  who  is  Wisdom  itself 
and  Goodness  itself,  which  are  universal  Order  itself, 
and  whose  infinite  power  is  intent  only,  through  all  the 
crimes,  calamities,  and  changes  of  the  world,  on  edu 
cating  his  creatures  into  the  similitude  of  his  own  im 
mutable  perfection.  We  imagine  that  in  all  our  doings, 
as  well  as  in  all  our  reasonings,  we  can  trust  to  the 
fixity  of  his  statutes,  in  the  least  things  as  well  as  the 


280  Comic  s  Philosophy. 

greatest,  though  they  happen  to  be  living  forces  instead 
of  a  spontaneous  mechanism,  with  as  sound  a  confi 
dence  as  the  best  of  the  Positivists  on  the  regularity  of 
'Maws/'  Our  science  is  as  capable  of  "  prevision"  as 
his,  but,  we  suspect,  with  an  immeasurably  broader 
reach,  and  an  inexpressibly  sweeter  solace. 

III.   The  third  fundamental  view  of  Comte  relates  to 
the  hierarchy  or  classification  of  the  sciences  according  to 
the  order  of  the  dependence  of  their  phenomena.    It  is  clearly 
his  most  brilliant  achievement,  though  vitiated  in  some 
respects   by  the   preliminary  errors   to  which   we  have 
already  referred.      Bacon,    D'Alembert,   Bentham,  Am 
pere,  and  others,  have  attempted  a  similar  construction 
of  the  scale  of  knowledge;  but  with  vastly  inferior  suc 
cess.      Bacon   proceeded  upon  a  tripartite  division  of 
the   human   faculties  into   memory,    imagination,    and 
reason,  upon  which  he  founded  the  three  generic  divi 
sions   of  knowledge,   as   History,    Poesy,   Science.      It 
was  a  superficial  arrangement,  and  incoherent  and  con 
fused  to  the  last  degree.     D'Alembert's  scheme  substi 
tuted  philosophy  for  science  in  Bacon's  division,  and 
modified,    without    materially    improving    the    details. 
Bentharn,  abandoning  Bacon's  trinity,  applied  a  dichot 
omic  or  dual  classification,  but  his  terminology  is  so 
bizarre,   with  its  centmtalogies,  idionlologies ,  and  anoop- 
neumatologies,  that  no  one  has  cared  to  master  its  mean 
ing.     Ampere's  scale,  better  than  the  others,  makes  a 
primary  order  of  the  cosmological  and  the  noological 
sciences,   which  he  subdivides  into  the  mathematical, 
the  physical,  the  natural,  the  medical,  the  philosophic, 
the  dialegmatic,  the  ethnological,  and  the  political,  dis 
tributing  these  again  into  subordinate  species.      But  it 
was  reserved  for  Comte  to  digest  these   schemes    into 
a  really  natural  order,   and  superior  to  all  preceding 


Comtes  Philosophy.  281 

ones,  in  that  it  works  upon  a  simple  and  definite  prin 
ciple. 

His  arrangement  is  this  :  i,  Mathematics  ;  2,  Astron 
omy  ;  3,  Physics ;  4,  Chemistry  ;  5,  Biology ;  6, 
Sociology  ;  to  which  he  has  subsequently  added,  though 
rather  as  parts  of  the  last,  Morals  and  Religion.  The 
subordinate  divisions  in  their  order  are  :  analysis, 
geometry,  and  mechanics ;  celestial  geometry  and 
celestial  mechanics  ;  barology,  thermology,  acoustics, 
optics,  and  electrology  ;  inorganic  and  organic  chemis 
try  ;  anatomy  and  physiology,  including  the  cerebral 
functions,  and  social  statics  and  dynamics.  These 
divisions,  both  primary  and  secondary,  rest  upon  the 
comparative  generality  or  complexity  of  the  phenomena 
to  which  we  refer.  Mathematics  is  put  first,  because  it 
considers  the  most  "general,  simple,  abstract,  and 
remote"  phenomena  known  to  us  ;  and  sociology  the 
last,  because  it  embraces  phenomena  the  most  particu 
lar,  compound,  concrete,  and  interesting.  Now,  that 
this  is  the  proper  order,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  what 
ever  is  observed  in  the  most  general  cases,  is  disengaged 
from  the  incidents  of  particular  cases,  and  may  be 
studied  with  the  greatest  facility.  Besides,  being  more 
remote  from  human  interests,  the  study  is  less  liable  to 
be  warped  by  passions  and  prejudices.  Moreover,  this 
is  the  order  of  the  dependences  of  the  sciences  in  nature, 
the  most  special  and  complex  depending  upon  the 
more  general,  so  that  to  know  the  latter  perfectly  the 
former  must  be  to  some  extent  previously  known.  This 
order,  again,  is  the  order  in  which  the  sciences  have 
been  chronologically  developed,  and  marks  the  degree 
of  precision  which  each  of  them  has  attained.  Comte, 
finally,  contends  that  the  effect  of  pursuing  the  sciences 
in  this  order  will  be  to  improve  method,  education,  and 


282  Comics  Philosophy. 

morals,  demonstrating  this  with  remarkable  force,  while 
its  signal  performance  is  that  it  necessitates  the  discovery 
of  a  new  science  to  complete  the  rest — viz.,  a  sound 
doctrine  of  Social  Progress  and  Order.* 

In  the  discussion  of  each  branch  of  this  division, 
Comte  treats,  in  the  most  luminous  manner,  of  the 
nature  or  object  of  each  science,  of  its  method  or  means 
of  exploration,  of  its  relations  to  the  foregoing  and  the 
succeeding  sciences,  and  of  its  prospective  improve 
ments  ;  and,  before  proceeding  to  remark  on  his  general 
scheme,  we  must  say,  that  it  is  impossible  for  any  one 
to  read  .his  thorough  and  masterly  criticisms,  without 
being  deeply  impressed  by  his  eminent  learning  and 
ability.  He  exhibits,  throughout,  such  a  comprehensive 
grasp  of  principles,  such  ready  sagacity,  such  consistent 
logic,  such  a  wonderful  steadiness  of  aim,  and  such  an 
easy  proficiency  in  all  the  minutest  details  of  his  sub 
ject—in  spite  of  a  few  mistakes  here  and  there,  which 
are  the  battle-horses  of  his  incompetent  critics — as  to 
rank  him  clearly  among  the  highest  class  of  speculative 
intellects, — at  least  with  Pythagoras,  Aristotle,  and 
Schelling,  if  we  cannot  quite  equal  him  to  Plato, 
Bacon,  Hegel,  and  Swedenborg.  Even  his  deficiencies 
are  suggestive,  arid  his  errors  open  up  a  way  to  the  most 
Valuable  and  pregnant  thoughts. 

As  to  his  classification  of  the  sciences,  we  know  of 
no  better,  and  we  can  conceive  of  its  being  improved, 

*  It  is  quite  curious  that  Hegel,  who  is  the  very  antipode  of  Comte, 
in  his  method  of  philosophizing, — Hegel  beginning  with  the  most 
abstract  conception  of  absolute  Being,  while  Comte  begins  with  the 
most  concrete  phenomena  of  the  Senses, — should  have  arrived  at  a 
scientific  arrangement  nearly  resembling  Comte 's.  Hegel's  order  is, 
I,  Logic  5  2,  Mechanics  or  Mathematics;  3,  Physics;  4,  Chemistry; 
5,  Organic  Physics,  or  Vegetable  and  Animal  life  ;  6,  The  Mind  ; 
7,  Politics, — and  subsequently,  Art,  Religion,  and  Philosophy. 


Comic  s  Philosophy.  283 

as  a  whole,  apart  from  a  few  though  quite  important 
modifications  of  detail,  only  by  a  larger  and  more  rigid 
application  of  the  principle  upon  which  it  proceeds. 
We  can  conceive  a  system  of  knowledge,  which  should 
treat  Logic,  or  formal  method,  distinctly  as  the  Basis  of 
all  the  sciences,  and  Philosophy,  including  Theology, 
as  their  Result — (a  distinction  which  points  out  at  once 
the  great  and  injurious  defects  of  Comte's  scheme)  ; 
but  within  the  sphere  of  strict  science,  we  cannot  sup 
pose  it  susceptible  of  improvement,  except,  as  we  have 
just  said,  upon  its  own  main  principle.  In  other  words, 
we  believe  that  this  proceeding  from  the  general  and 
simple  to  the  complex  and  special,  is  the  secret  of  all 
effective  organization,  whether  in  nature,  in  method,  in 
the  growth  of  the  mind,  or  in  the  movement  of  soci 
eties.  It  is  a  principle,  too,  let  us  here  observe,  which 
will  carry  Comte  himself  clear  off  the  legs  of  his  ma 
terialistic  Positivism,  into  the  profoundest  depths  of 
religion.* 

A  complete  scheme  of  knowledge  or  belief  implies 
three  things  :  ist,  A  region  to  be  explored  ;  2d,  An 
instrument  to  explore  it  with;  and  3d,  A  method  of 
working  that  instrument.  In  other  words,  there  must 
be  a  body  of  sciences,  a  doctrine  of  the  perceiving 
mind,  and  a  method  of  action;  and  these  three,  if  there 
be  unity  in  the  constitution  of  the  scheme,  must  prove 
each  other  in  the  last  result — /'.  e.,  they  must  correspond 
with  each  other  in  the  procession  of  their  movements. 
Now,  Comte's  system ization,  tested  by  this  criterion,  re 
veals  what  it  has,  and  what  it  has  not  done  :  it  has  given 
.us  a  body  of  science,  imperfect  to  the  extent  in  which  it 


*  [This  prophecy  has  been  signally  fulfilled  :  for,  Comte's  latest 
books  show  him  as  the  High  Priest  of  a  new  Religion — the  religion 
of  Humanity.] 


284  Comtes  Philosophy. 

has  excluded  a  large  class  of  our  most  important  beliefs  ; 
it  has  given  us  a  very  shallow  doctrine  of  the  perceiving 
mind,  only  as  a  subordinate  division  of  physiology,  car 
ried  forward  by  sociology  ;  while  his  method,  admirable 
in  many  respects,  we  are  left  to  learn  from  its  practical 
applications,  which  prove,  as  we  think,  that  it  is  in 
complete.  There  is  not,  consequently,  that  accordance 
between  Comte's  schemes  of  nature,  of  mind,  and  of 
method,  which  is  the  triple  lest  of  a  sound  systemiza- 
tion,  and  which  inevitably  follows,  as  we  wish  we  had 
space  to  illustrate,  from  his  own  law  of  "decreasing 
generality,"  etc. 

The  narrowness  of  Comte's  survey  of  the  field  of 
knowledge  we  have  already  remarked,  and  we  must 
now  state  in  what  respect  we  think  his  method  incom 
plete.  He  has  shown,  in  an  admirable  manner,  that 
each  science  has  a  method  and  spirit  of  its  own,  which 
is  not  applicable  to  others  ;  that  mathematical  method 
is  one  thing,  and  physical  another,  and  physiological 
another,  and  sociological  another ;  that  the  method  of 
one  should  not  be  allowed  to  encroach  upon  the  domain 
of  another,  and  that,  as  we  ascend  in  the  scale  of  the 
sciences,  our  means  of  exploration  increase  with  the 
dignity  of  the  pursuit  :  but  he  has  nowhere,  so  far  as  we 
are  able  to  discover,  risen  to  a  conception  of  that  uni 
versal  method  which  will  use,  while  it  absorbs,  all  par 
tial  and  inferior  methods.  We  refer  to  the  method  of 
Universal  Analogy.  Knowing  how  scientific  men  are 
apt  to  deride  it,  and  how  easily  it  may  be  abused  in 
superficial  hands,  we  yet  believe  that  it  will  be  found 
the  final  instrument  of  Philosophy.  No  one  can  have 
studied  nature  with  any  thoroughness  without  having 
perceived  that  her  system  is  one  of  ascending  repetitions, 
or  of  progressive  orders  and  reduplications  ;  that  she  is 
a  process  of  phenomenal  variations,  implicated  in  a 


Comtes  PJiilosophy.  285 

permanent  unity  ;  that  each  part  of  an  organic  form 
is  a  miniature  reproduction  of  its  whole  ;  that  every 
higher  organism  carries  forward  with  it  its  inferior  or 
ganisms  ;  in  short,  as  Goethe  expresses  it : 

"  Wie  Alles  sich  zum  Ganzen  webt, 
Eins  in  dem  andern  wirkt  und  lebt ! 
Wie  Himmelkrafte  auf  und  neider  steigen. 
Und  sich  die  gold'nen  Eimer  reichen  ! 
Mit  segendduftenden  schwingen 
Vom  Himmel  durch  die  Erde  dringen, 
Harmonisch  all  das  All  durchklingen."  * 

Goethe's  own  scientific  labors  were  animated  by  the 
method  of  analogy,  and  seem  in  their  results  like  poetic 
intuitions.  A  most  exquisite  use  is  made  of  it  also  in 
Mr.  Wilkinson's  book,  "The  Human  Body,  in  its 
Connection  with  Man,"  which,  we  presume,  no  one  can 
read  without  entering  into  a  new  world  of  the  most 
striking  and  beautiful  truth.  It  is  this  method  which 
has  illuminated  the  gigantic  labors  of  the  modern  Ger 
man  naturalists,  such  as  Cams,  Oken,  Schubert,  etc., 
with  an  almost  heavenly  light,  filling  the  universe  of 
natural  forms  with  humanitary  meanings,  and  building 
up  a  glorious  natural  theology,  not  on  the  empirical 
basis  of  "  contrivance  proves  design,"  but  on  the  more 
satisfactory  and  scientific  ground,  that  man,  the  image 
of  God,  is  also,  to  use  an  expression  of  Novalis,  the 
"systematic  index"  of  the  creation,  which  attests,  by 
every  line  and  movement,  that  he  is  truly  the  son  of  an 

*  "  How  the  all  weaves  itself  into  the  whole,  and  one  in  the  other 
acts  and  lives  !  How  celestial  forces  ascend  and  descend,  and  pass 
each  other  the  golden  pails  !  With  wings  perfumed  with  blessings, 
they  pervade  the  earth  from  heaven,  all  ringing  harmonically  through 
all." 


286  Comics  Philosophy. 

infinite  Father.  "  In  man,"  says  Professor  Slallo,  "all 
the  powers  of  the  universe  are  concentrated,  all  devel 
opments  united,  all  forms  associated.  He  is  the  bearer 
of  all  dignities  in  nature.  There  is  no  tone  to  which 
his  being  is  not  the  response,  no  form,  of  which  he  is 
not  the  type  ;"  but  he  does  not  give  the  reason,  which 
furnishes  the  ground  for  natural  analogies,  as  well  as 
for  a  deeper  spiritual  correspondence,  viz.,  that  the  au 
thor  of  nature  is  essentially  a  Man.  He  is  the  supreme 
Wisdom  and  Love,  of  which  the  goodness  and  truth  of 
our  humanity  is  the  living,  active  form.  The  world  of 
nature,  therefore,  whose  unceasing  yearnings  are  to 
minister  to  the  spirit  of  man,  is  instinct  everywhere  writh 
conspiring  humanities. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  infer  from  what  we  have  said, 
that  Comte  has  no  perception  of  this  method  ;  for  he 
distinctly  recognizes  an  elementary  form  of  analogy  in 
the  "  comparisons"  instituted  both  in  his  biology  and 
his  sociplogy.  He  even  speaks  of  the  comparative 
method  as  "one  of  the  greatest  of  logical  creations," 
and  in  another  place,  as  "  a  transcendent  method  of 
logical  investigation," — but  it  is  at  the  same  time  clear 
from  the  sense  in  which  he  employs  it  that  he  had  not 
fully  penetrated  its  more  fertile  uses.  The  inveterate 
hatred  with  which  he  is  imbued  for  every  process  hint 
ing  the  slightest  approach  to  theological  or  metaphysical 
conception,  has  blinded  his  eyes,  not  only  in  this  respect 
but  in  many  others,  even  to  the  most  beautiful  induc 
tions  contained  in  his  own  premises.  It  will  be  the 
lasting  honor  of  his  system,  for  instance,  that  it  has  so 
clearly  demonstrated  the  science  of  society  as  the  cul 
minating  glory  of  all  the  sciences,  without  which  they 
would  have  undergone  their  long  and  painful  evolu 
tions  in  vain,  and  from  the  reflected  lustre  of  which 
they  derive  their  brightest  illustrations  and  surest  char- 


Comics  Philosophy.  287 

acter  ;  but  with  this  great  truth,  tingling  as  one  might 
suppose  in  every  vein,  announcing,  too,  that  "the  fun 
damental  type  of  evolution  is  found  in  the  increasing 
preponderance  of  our  humanity  over  our  animality," — 
he  has  yet  failed  to  perceive  the  pre-eminent  mark  and 
distinction  of  that  humanity — he  does  not  discover  the 
characteristics  which  make  man,  a  man.  He  confesses 
the  superiority  of  his  physical,  intellectual,  and  social 
attributes  (though  some  of  these  he  intimates  are  ob 
scurely  anticipated  by  the  brutes),  but  he  does  not  dis 
cern,  behind  these  attributes,  a  supremer  life,  a  life  no 
longer  held  in  bondage  to  any  sensuous  or  finite  good, 
no  longer  subject  either  to  nature  or  society,  but  which 
feeds  upon  a  perfect  or  infinite  goodness,  beauty,  and 
truth.  His  loftiest  conception  is  of  the  natural  or  sci 
entific  man;  but  of  the  artist,  in  the  genuine  sense,  or 
of  the  truly  religious  man,  the  gouls  of  whose  aspira 
tion  are  the  "All-Fair  and  the  All-Good," — a  beauty 
and  loveliness  unconditioned  by  any  evil  or  defect, — he 
seems  to  entertain  scarcely  an  inkling.  It  is  true,  that  he 
is  forced,  by  his  own  logic,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter  in  his 
"Positive  Politics,"  to  construct,  as  the  final  and  com 
prehensive  unity  of  thought,  a  "Supreme  Being"  and 
a  "  religion,"  but  that  "  Grand-Eire'  is  no  more  than 
the  visible  and  organized  aggregate  called  Humanity, — 
a  humanity  "subject  to  all  the  fatalities,  mathematical, 
physical,  chemical,  biological,  and  social," — and  that 
"  religion"  is  the  reflective  worship  of  that  stupendous 
Grand-Eire  phenomenon  ! 

But  a  final  and  full  estimate  of  Comte  depends  upon 
a  consideration  of  his  "sociology,"  which  we  must  re 
serve,  if  happily  we  shall  be  permitted,  for  a  future 
opportunity.* 

*  [This  was  never  undertaken.] 


STRAUSS'S  LIFE   OF  JESUS.* 

| HIS  is  the  only  book  of  any  pretension  that  we 
have    received    this   month  :    so,   perforce,  we 
must  notice  it,  whether  we  have  what  Carlyle 
calls  ''inward  vocation"  or  not. 

It  is  just  twenty  years  since  the  now  famous  Leben 
Jesu  made  its  appearance  at  Ttibingen,  in  Germany. 
A  gun  suddenly  fired  among  a  crowd  of  women  could 
not  have  produced  a  greater  flutter  and  scream  than  this 
publication  did  among  the  theologians.  Not  because 
there  was  anything  particularly  new  in  its  doctrine,  inas 
much  as  the  same  views  of  the  Gospels  had  been  taken 
by  Bauer,  Krug,  Gabler,  and  others,  but  because 
these  views  were  set  forth  with  an  elaborateness  of  learn 
ing  and  logic,  and  a  keenness  and  severity  of  criticism, 
which  had  never  before  been  surpassed.  Strauss  wrote 
in  a  style  as  crisp  and  vigorous,  almost,  as  that  of  Les- 
sing  ;  he  was  a  complete  master  of  the  erudition  of  his 
subject ;  he  prosecuted  his  researches  with  a  minute  and 
thorough  attention  to  every  detail,  while  his  apparent 
spirit  was  not  that  of  the  vulgar  and  virulent  freethinker, 
but  of  the  calm  and  ardent  inquirer  after  truth.  He  was, 
moreover,  a  clergyman,  in  the  active  preparation  of 

*  The  Life  of  Jesus,  critically  examined.  By  Dr.  David  Frederick 
Strauss.  Translated  from  the  fourth  German  edition,  by  Marian 
Evans.  Calvin  Blanchard  :  New  York,  1855. 

From  Putnam's  Monthly,  August,  1855. 


Strdiisss  Life  of  Jesus.  289 

young  men  for  the  ministry,  and  thus  his  grenades  were 
discharged  in  the  very  citadel  of  Christianity. 

Having  stirred  up  a  twenty  years'  theological  war  in 
Germany,  France,  and  England,  this  work  is  now  pre 
sented,  in  an  excellent  translation,  to  this  country,  where 
it  will  probably  reach  the  popular  mind,  and  confirm 
whatever  of  skepticism  or  indifference,  as  to  religious 
matters,  may  be  lurking  behind  our  vast  material  ac 
tivity.  That  it  will  produce,  however,  anything  like  the 
sensation  here  which  it  has  abroad,  we  do  not  believe  : 
in  the  first  place,  because  it  falls  upon  us  very  much  as 
a  spent  shot ;  and  secondly,  because  there  is  not  the  same 
preparation  for  it  in  the  philosophical  culture  of  the 
people.  In  Europe,  it  was  the  legitimate  outgrowth  of 
a  vast  intellectual  movement,  begun  by  Hegel  and  his 
school,  of  which  we  know  comparatively  little  in  this 
country,  and  from  which,  with  our  decided  practical 
tendency,  we  are  not  likely  to  suffer  any  great  damage. 

We  do  not  propose,  therefore,  to  add  another  to  the 
thousand  and  one  replies  which  have  been  made  to  the 
book,  on  theological  grounds,  since  there  is  no  occasion 
for  it,  in  its  probable  influence.  But  the  historical  and 
literary  problem  which  it  presents,  is  one  of  permanent 
interest  and  curiosity,  apart  from  its  momentous  reli 
gious  bearing,  and  which  we  think  worthy  of  the  most 
serious  examination. 

The  truth  is,  that,  if  Strauss's  procedure  in  regard  to 
the  Gospels  can  be  sustained,  we  do  not  see  how  any 
history,  ancient  or  medieval,  is  to  stand.  We  may  dis 
pose  of  nearly  all  the  great  names  of  literature  and  art, 
no<-  only  of  the  remoter  ages,  but  of  times  as  late  as 
those  of  Luther,  Shakspeare,  and  Milton,  in  this  way, 
and  so  convert  the  universal  records  of  our  race  into  a 
mere  mesh  of  figments  and  lies.  Indeed,  we  believe 
that  a  learned  literary  lady  has  already  announced  her 
\\ 


290  Strauss's  Life  of  yes  us. 

intention  of  showing  that  no  such  poet  as  Shakspeare 
ever  lived,  only  a  player  of  that  name,  who  was  a  butt, 
for  the  wits  of  his  time,  whose  peculiar  jest  consisted  in 
writing  dramas,  such  as  Hamlet,  Macbeth,  and  Othello, 
and  fathering  them  on  simple  William.  According  to 
this  view,  the  age  of  Elizabeth  spawned  immortal  plays, 
just  as,  in  the  view  of  Strauss,  the  age  of  Jesus  spawned 
the  most  sublime  and  beautiful  of  religious  legends. 

But,  let  us  first  state,  more  at  length,  what  the  theory 
of  the  German  Doctor  is,  before  we  proceed  to  any  re 
marks  upon  its  historical  and  literary  deficiency.  He 
admits  that  a  man  named  Jesus  appeared  among  the 
Jews,  as  a  Messiah  or  religious  reformer,  just  about  the 
time  in  which  our  Lord  is  said  to  have  come  in  the 
Gospel  narratives,  so  generally  accepted  as  authentic 
records.  He  probably  believed  himself  to  be  the  Mes 
siah  dimly  shadowed  forth  in  the  religious  writings  and 
traditions  of  the  Jews,  and  persuaded  a  considerable 
number  of  followers  to  adopt  him  in  the  same  character. 
Having  adopted  him  as  such,  of  course  they  began  to 
ascribe  to  him  all  those  qualities  which  were  supposed 
to  characterize  the  Messiah.  But,  in  the  midst  of  their 
propagandism,  he  was  put  to  death  by  the  government. 
This  was,  for  a  time,  a  fatal  blow  to  the  hopes  of  his 
disciples,  as  well  as  to  his  own  pretensions.  Yet,  in  the 
midst  of  their  despondency,  the  report  is  spread  that  the 
leader,  whom  they  had  buried,  had  risen  from  the  grave. 
They  eagerly  believed  the  report,  and  some  of  the  more 
impressible,  the  women  especially,  fancied  that  they  saw 
him  in  person.  Thus,  gradually,  the  doctrine  of  his 
resurrection  came  to  be  regarded  as  an  actual  fact,  and 
the  conviction  of  his  Messiahship  was  confirmed.  Ac 
cordingly,  in  the  course  of  the  thirty  years  subsequent 
to  his  death,  every  element  which  entered  as  a  compo 
nent  part  into  the  current  traditions  of  the  Messiah  was 


Strauss  s  Life  of  Jesus.  291 

ascribed,  by  the  enthusiastic  veneration  of  his  adherents, 
to  Jesus.  He  became  the  focus  in  which  all  the  scat 
tered  rays  of  Jewish  Scripture,  rabbinical  gloss,  and 
popular  desire  were  concentred.  The  glorious  Psalms, 
the  lofty  prophecies,  the  marvellous  deeds,  the  divine 
appearances  of  the  ancient  Jewish  mythology  were 
blended,  by  the  ardent  and  exalted  hopes  of  his  imme 
diate  friends,  around  the  few,  scanty,  and  insignificant 
facts  of  his  actual  life.  He  was  the  nucleus  of  all  the 
sensitive  and  poetic  religious  imagination  of  the  time. 
Wonders  and  marvels  accompanied  his  steps,  and  a 
halo  of  sacred  glory  encircled  his  head. 

Now,  the  Gospels  are  the  records  of  these  popular 
and  glorifying  legends,  which  had  been  slowly  formed, 
with  no  avowed  purpose  of  deception,  with  no  open 
intention  to  palm  upon  the  world  a  historical  falsehood, 
but  inevitably  and  naturally  out  of  the  circumstances  of 
the  age,  into  a  large,  complex,  richly  colored,  though 
inharmonious,  Christian  mythology.  They  are  the  ac 
cretions  of  fancy  and  love,  gathered,  by  imperceptible 
degrees,  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  the  people,  around 
the  name  which  had  come  to  represent  to  them  the 
highest  religious  aspiration  or  idea  of  the  human  soul. 
There  is  no  need,  therefore,  of  saying  with  the  Deists 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  that  Christianity  was  a  wilful 
imposition  ;  there  is  no  need  of  trying  to  account  for 
its  miracles,  as  the  Rationalists  do,  by  natural  or  magical 
causes,  for  there  is  a  more  obvious  and  satisfactory 
way  of  accounting  for  everything  in  the  doctrine  of 
myths.  All  other  religions  have  had  their  origin  in 
these  popular  myths,  and  analogy  would  lead  us  to  sup 
pose  that  Christianity  is  no  exception. 

A  plausible  theory,  Dr.  Strauss,  but  one  that  does 
not  at  all  convince  our  judgment  !  Without  going  into 
the  theological  argument,  but  simply  on  historical  and 


292  Strauss  s  Life  of  Jesus. 

literary  grounds,  we  will  tell  you  why.  It  does  not 
begin  to  account  for  the  historical  and  literary  facts  of 
the  case.  We  say  nothing  of  the  impossibility  of  a  few 
illiterate  and  obscure  Jews  of  Palestine  having  spun  out 
of  their  heads  the  most  sublime,  the  most  spiritual,  the 
most  .profound,  and  the  most  consolatory  religion  that 
was  ever  known  ;  but  we  do  say,  that,  historically  and 
artistically,  the  origin  of  the  Gospels,  in  the  way  in 
which  you  describe,  would  be  a  greater  miracle  than 
any  they  themselves  record,  or  any  even  that  may  be 
recorded  in  the  archives  of  Romanism. 

There  is  an  antecedent  improbability  in  this  theory, 
to  our  minds,  because  the  age  in  which  the  Gospels 
appeared  was  not  a  mythical,  but  a  historical  age.  All 
the  great  mythological  religions  that  we  are  acquainted 
with  have  arisen  in  the  dawn  and  twilight  of  time,  in 
the  beginning,  and  not  at  the  close  of  national  existence's, 
and  by  very  slow  and  successive  steps,  running  over 
periods  of  thousands  of  years,  and  not  suddenly  or 
within  a  single  generation.  This  was  clearly  the  case 
with  the  fabulous  stories  of  Egypt,  India,  Greece,  Rome, 
Scandinavia,  Mexico,  and  the  Pacific  Islands.  They 
date  from  the  most  primeval  times,  they  cover  vast 
epochs,  and  they  bear  unmistakable  traces  of  local  and 
national  origin.  But  the  Gospels  arose  in  Judea,  in 
the  midst  of  a  well-known  and  critical  condition  of 
things.  The  ancient  faith  had  lost  its  simplicity,  and 
had  become  a  pompous  ritual  :  oppressed  by  the  Ro 
man  power,  its  people  had  lost  the  real  significance  of 
their  traditions  and  oracles,  and  were  looking  only  for  a 
political  liberator.  All  around  them  were  highly  culti 
vated  cities  and  nations  ; — Alexandria,  with  its  gymnasia 
and  schools  ;  Athens,  with  its  intellectual  civilization  ; 
Arabia,  with  its  treasures  of  learning  ;  Antioch,  famous 
for  its  erudition  ;  and  Rome,  with  its  philosophers  and 


Strauss 's  Life  of  Jesus.  293 

historians.  Few  a^es  that  we  can  recall  were  less  favor 
able  to  the  growth  cf  a  new  religion,  and  particularly 
one  founded  upon  the  fables  of  the  most  despised  of  all 
existing  races.  Doubt,  unbelief,  derision,  and  scorn, 
were  the  characteristics  of  the  lighter  literature,  and  un 
sparing,  minute,  and  active  criticism,  that  of  the  higher 
learning.  Lucian,  the  Greek  Voltaire,  who  jested  re 
morselessly  with  all  the  gods  of  the  Pantheon,  was  the 
representative  of  the  one,  and  the  lecturers  of  Alexan 
dria,  who  analyzed  and  probed  all  systems  of  philosophy 
and  thought,  like  anatomical  dissectors,  were  the  repre 
sentatives  of  the  other  ;  while  an  easy  epicureanism  gave 
its  tone  to  manners  and  practical  life.  Was  it  likely 
that,  in  the  midst  of  all  this  doubt,  learning,  criticism, 
and  philosophy,  a  few  Jewish  fables  should  grow  into 
a  living  faith,  and  become  the  dominant  conviction  of 
mankind  ? 

Then,  again,  the  narratives  of  the  Gospels  do  not 
read,  in  the  least,  like  the  myths  and  legends  with 
which  we  are  familiar.  They  have,  throughout,  the  air 
of  veritable  narratives.  They  profess,  on  the  face  of 
them,  to  be  records  of  things  actually  said  and  done. 
They  clearly  distinguish,  in  their  own  text,  what  is 
meant  to  be  historical  from  what  is  meant  to  be  fabu 
lous  or  allegorical,  as  in  the  case  of  the  parables.  Read 
the  introduction  to  St.  Luke,  for  instance,  and  see  with 
what  care  the  writer  asserts  that  his  Gospel  is  founded, 
not  upon  popular  credulity  or  tradition,  but  upon  first- 
handed  evidence.  His  very  object,  he  says,  is  to  correct 
these  traditional  histories  of  Christ,  and  to  supply  an 
account  from  eye-witnesses,  whose  statements  he  had 
sedulously  scrutinized,  and  traced  to  their  origin.  But 
the  whole  tenor  of  these  narratives  is  so  unlike  that  of 
the  confessedly  apochryphal  Gospels,  and  of  legends 
generally,  that  a  reader  the  least  accustomed  to  literary 


294  Strauss 's  Life  of  Jesus. 

discrimination  would  detect  the  difference  at  once. 
Compare  the  "Gospel  of  the  Infancy,"  or  the  "  History 
of  the  Twelve  Tribes,"  or  the  "Book  of  Joseph,  the 
High  Priest,"  or  the  Ada  Sanctorum  of  the  Bolland- 
ists,  or  "Turpin's  Chronicles  of  Charlemagne,"  or 
any  other  works,  the  result  of  popular  credulity,  with 
the  Gospels,  and  instantly  you  discover  a  world-wide 
disparity.  In  these  you  recognize  the  hand  of  truth, 
but  in  those  the  hand  of  fancy  and  superstition.  You 
can  no  more  confound  them  than  you  could  a  page 
from  Mandeville's  Travels  with  a  page  from  Burns's 
Justice.  Indeed,  we  could  wish  no  better  evidence, 
wherewith  to  convince  a  jury  of  twelve  intelligent  men 
of  the  genuineness  of  the  Gospels,  than  these  legendary 
books  which  aspire  to  something  of  the  same  character. 
In  the  former,  we  find  simplicity,  honesty,  unity, 
naturalness,  and  detail  (to  say  nothing  of  their  lofty 
wisdom  and  purity  of  morals),  while,  in  the  latter,  are 
exaggeration,  distortion,  inconsistency,  unnaturalness, 
and  vagueness,  to  say  nothing  of  their  ignorance,  cun 
ning,  immorality,  and  vulgar  human  traits. 

Strauss  has  dwelt  at  great  length,  and  with  the  coolest 
and  most  impassive  criticism,  upon  the  many  discrep 
ancies  of  the  several  Gospels,  but  he  does  not,  and 
cannot,  deny  the  wonderful  unity  of  aim  and  spirit  that 
pervades  them,  in  spite  of  verbal  differences  and  insig 
nificant  contradictions.  But  could  there  be  a  stronger 
characteristic  of  real  history,  or  a  more  fundamental 
departure  from  the  mythical  embellishments  of  histpry, 
than  this  general  adherence  to  a  single  purpose,  in  the 
midst  of  considerable  varieties  of  detail  ?  Have  we 
genuine  accounts  by  several  hands,  of  any  period  or 
of  any  distinguished  man,  from  the  days  of  Thucydides 
and  Zenophon  to  those  of  Bancroft  and  Graham,  in 
which  such  unity  with  variety  is  not  a  prominent 


Strauss's  Life  of  Jesus.  296 

feature  ?  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  have  we  any  mytholo 
gies  in  which  the  diversities  are  not  wholly  irrecon 
cilable  ?  Strauss's  particular  instances  of  contradiction 
between  the  Evangelists  we  leave  to  the  theologians  to 
settle,  but  they  no  more  affect  the  real  question  with  us, 
i.  e.,  whether  the  Gospels  are  substantially  historical  or 
mythical,  than  the  fact  that  Todd  says  John  Milton  was 
born  in  1608,  Toland,  that  he  was  born  in  1606,  and 
Hallam,  that  he  was  born  in  1609,  affects  our  belief  in 
the  actual  existence  of  Milton.  Macaulay  and  Lingard 
give  us  very  different  accounts  of  the  reign  of  James  the 
Second  of  England,  yet  we  believe  that  there  was  a 
James  the  Second,  and  that  he  was  not  a  creation  of  the 
myth -forming  propensities  of  the  whigs  and  tories  of 
1685. 

If  there  were  no  other  proof  of  the  genuineness  of 
the  Gospels  than  the  character  which  they  ascribe  to 
Christ,  that  alone  would  furnish  evidence  beyond  all 
cavil  and  doubt.  It  is  a  character  so  transcendently 
original  in  its  mere  conception,  so  thoroughly  and  pro 
foundly  consistent  in  its  working  out,  so  remarkable  for 
its  combination  of  almost  opposite  traits — so  full  of  a 
mingled  majesty  and  loveliness,  firmness  and  gentleness, 
candor  and  reserve,  and  so  radically  free  from  every 
morbid  tendency  or  sentiment,  from  fanaticism,  pride, 
impetuosity,  weakness,  or  one-sidedness  of  any  kind, 
that,  if  not  drawn  from  the  life,  it  is  the  most  stupendous 
and  wonderful  piece  of  art  that  was  ever  exhibited  by 
the  human  mind.  We  may  search  the  records  of 
ancient  or  modern  literature  in  vain,  to  find  anything 
like  it,  in  i;s  singular  perfection  and  beauty,  and  yet  in 
its  complete  naturalness,  and,  we  may  say,  unconscious 
ness  of  development.  The  old  Greeks  were  the  most 
intellectual  people  of  the  world  ;  they  were  tremblingly 
alive  to  every  form  and  semblance  of  beauty  ;  their 


296  Strauss' s  Life  of  Jesus. 

divinities  were  the  ideal  types  of  their  most  exalted 
conceptions  of  men  and  women  ;  yet  we  travel  through 
their  populous  heavens,  among  their  Zeuses,  their 
Poseidons,  their  Heres,  and  their  Aphrodites,  and  find 
no  shape  that  comes  within  a  million  furlongs  of  that 
noble  and  lowly  Figure  which  meets  us  on  every  page 
of  Luke  and  John.  Our  modern  imaginations,  with 
all  the  advantages  of  the  Christian  exemplar,  have 
exhausted  their  powers  in  the  creation  of  poetic  and 
lovely  personages — Dante,  Chaucer,  Shakspeare,  Scott, 
Goethe,  and  Byron — and  yet,  in  all  this  world  of  "fair 
humanities,"  there  is  not  one  that  would  not  have 
thought  it  an  impious  presumption  to  be  compared  with 
Him,  who  was,  after  all,  says  Dr.  Strauss,  a  figment  of 
the  brain  of  Jewish  fishermen  and  peasants  !  What  the 
Homers  and  Eschyluses,  what  the  Shakspeares  and  Scotts 
could  not  do,  or  have  not  done,  the  popular  credulity 
of  a  few  unlearned  enthusiasts,  acting  upon  the  meager- 
est  basis  of  facts,  has  accomplished  !  Verily,  there 
may  be  difficulty  in  believing  miracles,  but  none  equal 
to  that  which  such  a  supposition  implies. 

Consider,  further,  the  marvellously  original  and  com 
prehensive  scheme  of  reform  which  these  fables  impute 
to  their  principal  character  and  his  followers.  It  was 
not  a  restoration  of  the  political  fortunes  of  their  coun 
try,  nor  yet  the  establishment  of  a  perfect  State,  not 
the  founding  of  a  great  school,  nor  the  construction 
of  a  model  society,  but  the  radical  regeneration  of  the 
whole  human  race.  Now,  there  had  been  before  them 
a  great  many  heroes,  a  great  many  statesmen  and  kings, 
a  great  many  philosophers,  and  a  great  many  founders 
of  religion  ;  there  had  been  Moseses  and  Solomons, 
Solons  and  Lycurguses,  Socrateses  and  Pythagorases, 
Zoroasters  and  Confutses,  but  there  was  never  one  w-hc 
had  conceived  a  plan  of  human  improvement  at  all 


Strauss's  Life  of  Jesus.  297 

comparable,  in  benevolence,  in  extent,  in  wisdom,  in 
practicability,  with  the  plan  which  grew  up  by  chance, 
it  is  said,  in  Judea,  and  took  form  in  the  hearts  of  its 
lowest  populace.  All  others  had  been  either  local  in 
their  aims,  or,  at  most,  national  ;  or  circumscribed  to 
few  objects,  such  as  intellectual  culture  or  political 
change  ;  or  unjust  in  their  application,  as  involving  the 
conquest  of  other  nations  ;  or  entirely  impracticable, 
like  the  academies  of  Pythagoras  and  the  republic  of 
Plato  ;  but  this  scheme  was,  at  once,  universal  and  indi 
vidual,  embracing  all  nations,  all  times,  and  all  men, 
discarding  the  use  of  force,  discarding  secret  agencies, 
discarding  indirection  and  deceit,  resting  its  claims 
entirely  upon  its  inherent  truth  and  goodness,  appealing 
only  to  the  most  elevated  motives,  compromising  with 
no  prejudices,  courting  no  power,  flattering  no  vanities 
or  vices,  sternly  rebuking  every  evil,  not  in  its  external 
form  or  its  excrescences,  but  in  its  inward  sources  in 
the  affections  and  thoughts,  and,  yet,  promising  itself 
the  ultimate  sway  of  society  and  mankind.  Where,  ir 
the  name  of  reason  and  common  sense,  did  the  popu 
lace  of  Palestine  obtain  a  scheme  at  once  so  magnifi 
cent,  so  pure,  so  wise,  and  so  benevolent  ?  From  the 
Hebrew  oracles  ?  No  !  for  it  is  there  concealed  in  the 
sevenfold  obscurity  of  types  and  shadows.  From  the 
vague  and  misty  pantheisms  of  the  East,  with  their 
metempsychoses  and  indolent  contemplations,  their 
astrologies  and  their  fire-worships  ?  No  !  from  the 
wrangling,  squabbling,  concupiscent,  and,  very  often, 
dirty  gods  of  Greece  ?  No  !  centuries  afier  the  Gospels 
had  got  a  foothold  in  the  world,  influences  from  these 
sources  came  in  to  corrupt  their  purity,  to  debase  their 
morals,  to  distort  them  into  formalities,  and  asceti 
cisms,  and  superstitions,  and  to  blossom  into  rank 
and  luxuriant  growths  of  bigotry  and  error.  But  the 


298  Strauss' s  Life  of  Jesus. 

Gospels  themselves  are  free  from  every  stain.  They 
stand  alone  in  their  simplicity  ;  they  are  unique  in  their 
loveliness  ;  they  lift  their  heads  above  the  faiths,  tra 
ditions,  and  systems  by  which  they  were  surrounded, 
as  the  snowy  Alps  tower  over  the  dark  shrubs  and 
bushes  tangled  around  their  feet.  Is  it  possible,  then,  to 
believe  that  they  were  the  accidental  or  even  wilful 
offspring  of  the  popular  mind  of  Jerusalem,  attaching 
itself  to  the  fallen  fortunes  of  a  misguided  youth,  and 
weaving  together,  with  the  desultory  memorials  of  his 
unhappy  career,  a  scheme  at  once  so  consistent,  com 
plete,  and  sublime? 

There  could  not  be  a  greater  contrast  in  substance 
and  form,  between  what  is  true  and  what  is  fanciful, 
than  is  presented  by  the  incidents  of  the  Gospel,  as  they 
are  given  to  us  for  historical  facts  by  its  writers,  and  the 
same  incidents,  as  subsequently  worked  up  by  the  myth- 
forming  propensities  of  human  nature.  Take  the  treat 
ment  of  Mary,  the  mother  of  Jesus,  for  an  example. 
What  a  fine  subject  for  all  kinds  of  sentimental  and 
rhetorical  embellishment.  No  woman  that  ever  lived 
sustained  such  august  and  wonderful  relations — rela 
tions  to  man  and  God.  How  touching  every  thought 
connected  with  her  singular  lot !  What  a  theme  for  the 
heart  and  the  affections  to  dilate  upon,  for  the  mystical 
imaginations  of  the  East  to  brood  over,  and  for  the  more 
sensual  imaginations  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  to 
adorn  !  Read,  in  the  legends  of  the  Madonna,  col 
lected  by  Mrs.  Jameson,  of  the  endless,  extravagant, 
and  clustering  fables  of  which  she  became  the  centre, 
even  in  colder  Europe  ;  how  she  inspired  so  much  of 
the  beautiful  art  of  art's  most  beautiful  age  ;  how  the 
name  of  "our  lady"  kindled  the  romantic  enthusiasms 
of  chivalry  ;  how  poetry,  sentiment,  devotion,  poured 
their  emotional  fulness  upon  her,  till  she  became,  in  the 


Strauss  s  Life  of  Jesus.  299 

solemn  decrees  of  the  Church,  the  very  mother  of  God, 
immaculate  from  her  birth,  and  an  object  of  venera 
tion,  and  worship,  forever !  Panegyrics  and  prayers 
are  still  wafted  to  her  from  every  Catholic  cathedral  of 
Christendom,  and  breathed  in  the  silence  of  every  Cath 
olic  home.  She  shares  the  throne  of  Heaven  with  her 
divine  Son,  and  receives  even  a  warmer  adoration  than 
He.  Such  is  Mary  in  the  estimation  of  the  myth- 
forming  faculties,  under  the  natural  action  of  the  mind, 
contemplating  the  peculiarities  of  her  story.  Such  she 
ought  to  have  been  in  the  Gospels,  if  the  Gospels  were 
only  myths.  But  there  is  not  a  trace  of  all  this  in  the 
primitive  record.  She  is  only  two  or  three  times  men 
tioned  by  name,  and  then  without  an  epithet  of  praise. 
Pier  virtue  and  her  glory,  whatever  they  were,  are  ig 
nored.  No  attempt  is  anywhere  made  to  environ  her 
with  lustre,  to  reflect  the  divine  greatness  of  the  Son 
upon  the  mother,  or  to  pay  her  a  single  tribute  of 
honor.  Her  emotions,  whether  of  anguish,  or  of  joy, 
are  left  to  the  solitude  of  her  heart.  She  is  simply 
"  Mary,  the  mother  of  Jesus,"  and  no  more  ;  because, 
the  evangelists,  writing  history,  wrote  the  literal  truth, 
whereas,  had  they  been  under  the  control  of  the  mythic 
faculties,  they  could  not  in  this  respect  have  said 
enough,  but  would  have  anticipated  all  the  fanciful 
legends  of  the  middle  ages. 

A  thousand  similar  and  other  objections  to  the  theory 
of  Strauss  occur  to  us,  which,  if  we  were  writing  a  reg 
ular  review  of  his  book,  for  the  body  of  our  Magazine, 
might  be  adduced,  but,  in  these  compressed  editorial 
notes,  \ve  can  only  glance  at  a  few  of  the  more  obvious 
considerations.  There  is,  however,  one  thought  which 
we  cannot  pass  over.  It  is  this  :  that  on  Strauss's  prin 
ciples,  the  momentous  changes  which  Christianity  has 
wrought  are  effects  without  a  cause.  It  is  impossible  to 


;oo  Strauss' s  Life  of 


fesus. 


conceive  how  a  myth,  or  a  mass  of  ill-digested  myths, 
should  have  so  "got  the  start  of  the  majestic  world"  as 
to  become  the  inspiring  soul  of  all  its  best  art,  learning, 
literature,  jurisprudence,  practical  activity — in  short,  of 
its  highest  civilization.  We  can  readily  see  how  the 
admiration  of  Christ's  early  friends  should  have  raised 
him  into  a  hero  and  a  demigod.  We  can  see  how  the 
virtues  and  sentiments  ascribed  to  him  should  come  to 
have  a  powerful  influence  on  men's  minds.  But  we  do 
not  see  what  impulse  there  can  be  in  a  fabulous  history, 
to  lead  thousands  of  men,  women,  and  children,  during 
the  very  age  of  its  origin,  to  ignominious  and  cruel 
deaths  in  attestation  of  its  literal  truth.  We  do  not  see 
how  a  cluster  of  legends  should  have  undermined  Ju 
daism,  the  most  tenacious  of  all  faiths,  overthrown  the 
idolatry  of  Paganism,  supplanted  the  light  mythology 
of  Greece,  and  ascended  the  throne  of  the  Roman 
Caesars,  when  Rome  was  in  her  vigor.  We  do  not  see 
how  they  should  become  the  nucleus  of  all  the  public  vir 
tues  and  the  private  hopes  of  the  world — how  they  should 
have  borne  the  cause  of  humanity  above  the  turbulence 
and  barbarism  of  the  middle  ages,  as  the  ark  bore  it 
above  the  waters  of  the  Deluge — how  they  should  have 
moulded  the  institutions  and  manners  of  all  modern 
nations — convinced  the  reason  and  conquered  the  affec 
tions  of  the  most  enlightened  men  of  every  race,  and 
been  the  balm  and  consolation  of  its  humblest  spirits — a 
power  mighty  to  arouse  and  soothe,  to  strengthen  and 
purify  the  souls  of  men,  in  all  their  varieties  of  condition 
— which  is  at  this  day  the  synonym  of  whatever  is  free, 
lovely,  noble,  and  living  in  the  most  advanced  civiliza 
tions  ;  and  which,  as  if  only  beginning  to  manifest  its 
real  strength,  promises,  for  the  future  of  the  globe,  a 
more  lustrous  and  beautiful  development  than  art  has 
ever  pictured  or  poetry  dreamed.  Ah,  no,  these  leaves 


Strauss  s  Life  of  Jesiis.  301 

of  the  Gospels,  meant  for  the  healing  of  the  nations, 
were  more  than  sprouts  from  the  withered  trunk  of  Ju 
daism  ! 

Strauss  is  aware  of  this  last  difficulty  in  his  views,  and, 
in  a  weak  concluding  chapter,  endeavors  to  account  for 
the  effects  of  Christianity  on  the  ground  of  its  inherent 
truth.  He  evaporates  its  historical  contents,  but  leaves 
its  dogmas  as  a  residuum  behind  !  Christ,  instead  of 
being  an  individual,  is  an  idea — He  is  the  idea  of  the 
race.  "Humanity  is  the  union  of  the  two  natures — 
God  become  man,  the  infinite  manifesting  itself  in  the 
finite — the  child  of  the  visible  mother  and  the  invisible 
father,  nature  and  spirit — the  worker  of  miracles,  in  so 
far  as  the  spirit  more  and  more  subjugates  nature — the 
sinless  existence  ;  for  pollution  cleaves  to  the  individual, 
but  does  not  touch  the  race.  It  is  humanity  that  dies, 
rises,  and  ascends  to  Heaven,  as,  from  the  negation  of 
its  phenomenal  life,  ever  proceeds  a  higher  spiritual 
life,  and  from  the  suppression  of  its  mortality  as  a  per 
sonal,  national,  and  terrestrial  spirit  arises  its  union 
with  the  infinite  spirit  of  the  heavens."  But  how  did 
those  Jewish  fishermen,  two  thousand  years  ago,  get 
informed  of  this  profound  Hegelian  philosophy? 


THE  LATE  HORACE  BINNEY 
WALLACE.* 

IE  tahe  some  shame  to  ourselves  that  we  have 
not  before  directed  the  attention  of  our  read 
ers  to  this  remarkable  volume.  It  is  true 
our  pages  have  twice  referred  to  it,  with  brief  though 
admiring  comment,  but  it  deserves  a  more  elaborate 
consideration  at  our  hands.  Wallace  was  one  of  those 
accomplished  and  noble  minds,  which  ought  never  to 
be  suffered  to  pass  away  without  a  tribute  from  the 
grateful  hearts  of  his  countrymen,  and  especially  from 
those  who  are  laboring,  as  he  labored,  in  the  cause  of 
the  humanities. 

This  recognition  is  all  the  more  due  to  him,  because 
he  was  not  of  that  intellectual  and  moral  constitution 
which  enables  the  possessor  of  it  to  attain  a  ready  and 
popular  acceptance.  He  had  all  the  ability  requisite 
to  a  great  literary  or  professional  success,  and  earnest 
ness  as  well  as  vivacity  of  spirit  enough  to  have  attached 
a  large  share  of  public  regard  to  whatever  he  might  un 
dertake  ;  but  his  modesty  was  even  greater  than  his 
parts.  He  was  ambitious  of  the  scholar's  rather  than 
the  writer's  fame.  Conservative  in  his  habits,  and  above 

*  Art,  Scenery,  and  Philosophy  in  Europe.  Being  Fragments  from 
the  Portfolio  of  the  late  HORACE  BINNKY  WALLACE,  of  Philadelphia. 
Philadelphia:  Herman  Hooker,  1855. 

From  Putnam's  Monthly,  September,  1855. 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  303 

the  necessity  of  labor,  he  made  fewer  public  trials  of 
his  powers  than  their  unquestionable  superiority  would 
have  warranted.  His  earlier  works,  which  he  regarded 
as  mere  tentatives,  were  published  anonymously  ;  but, 
had  he  put  his  name  to  them,  they  would  have  earned 
him  rank  and  influence.  We  do  not  regret,  however, 
that,  in  an  age  when  the  temptations  to  a  premature 
publicity  are  so  many,  he  should  have  preferred  to 
husband  his  resources.  A  single  book,  like  the  one 
before  us,  the  result  of  years  of  careful  study  and 
thought,  even  if  there  are  no  others  among  his  manu 
scripts,  would  be  a  rich  repayment  of  his  reticence. 

Mr.  Wallace  was  born  at  Philadelphia  in  the  year 
1817,  and  died  at  Paris  in  1852.  He  was,  conse 
quently,  only  thirty-five  years  of  age  at  the  time  of  his 
death.  His  father,  a  gentleman  of  property  and  cul 
ture,  had  carefully  supervised  his  education  in  earlier 
years,  particularly  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics. 
Long  before  the  usual  age  at  which  boys  are  received 
in  college,  he  was  well  grounded  in  the  preparatory 
branches.  The  atmosphere  of  social  and  religious 
refinement  that  surrounded  him  in  the  home  of  his 
parents,  noted  alike  for  their  cheerfulness  and  culture, 
developed  the  better  qualities  of  his  heart  along  with 
those  of  the  mind. 

In  his  fifteenth  year,  he  was  matriculated  at  the  Uni 
versity  of  Pennsylvania,  where  he  attached  himself  par 
ticularly  to  mathematical  pursuits,  in  which  he  attained 
a  wonderful  proficiency.  After  two  years'  study,  he 
was  then  removed  to  Nassau  Hall,  Princeton.  It  was 
there  that  we  made  his  acquaintance,  and  we  can  speak, 
from  personal  knowledge,  of  his  extraordinary  attain 
ments  and  capacity  at  that  time.  He  was,  however,  so 
much  of  a  recluse  in  his  habits,  that  it  begat  among 
his  fellow-students  a  suspicion  of  hauteur  and  aristo- 


304  Horace  Binncy  Wallace. 

cratic  feeling,  not  favorable  to  his  general  popularity, 
though  his  accurate  and  extensive  scholarship  was  uni 
versally  conceded.  In  the  higher  departments  of  the 
mathematics  he  stood  almost  without  a  rival,  while  his 
familiarity  with  the  languages  was  scarcely  less  marked. 
But  he  paid  little  regard  to  the  routine  of  college  ex 
ercises,  seeming  to  have  already  anticipated  the  greater 
part  of  the  regular  studies,  and  consequently  was  not 
graduated  wiih  as  high  honors  as  he  otherwise  might 
have  attained. 

Having  left  college  in  1835,  he  passed  a  short  time 
in  attendance  upon  the  medical  and  chemical  lectures 
at  Philadelphia,  when  he  commenced  the  study  of  the 
law,  first  in  the  office  of  his  father,  and  afterward  in 
that  of  the  late  Charles  Chauncey,  a  distinguished  prac 
titioner.  He  studied  it  with  characteristic  avidity,  not 
as  a  system  of  details  for  the  regulation  of  practice,  but 
as  a  profound  and  philosophic  science,  mastering  es 
pecially  the  theory  of  tenures  and  estates,  which  lies  at 
the  foundation  of  so  much  collateral  learning.  Yet,  in 
the  midst  of  his  intense  and  varied  professional  labors, 
he  was  not  so  unwise  as  to  relinquish,  as  too  many 
lawyers  do,  the  habit  of  literary  composition.  It  is 
said,  by  his  biographer,  that  if  the  essays  and  larger 
works,  which  he  published  from  his  seventeenth  year 
to  the  time  of  his  death,  generally  under  assumed 
names,  were  collected,  they  would  form  no  less  than 
sixteen  duodecimo  volumes,  of  two  or  three  hundred 
pages  each.  This  is  a  grand  example  of  industry  for 
his  professional  successors. 

Among  the  works  to  which  Mr.  Wallace  put  his 
name,  were  several  of  a  legal  character,  such  as  the 
notes  to  Smith's  leading  cases  in  Law,  White  and 
Tudor's  leading  cases  in  Equity,  and  on  American 
leading  cases,  of  which  the  highest  authority  of  the 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  306 

American  bar  said  :  "There  is  not  a  remark  in  the 
whole  body  which  does  not  show  the  mind  of  a  law 
yer,  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  science,  instinct 
ively  perceiving  and  observing  all  its  limitations,  its 
harmonies,  its  modulations,  its  discords,  as  a  cultivated 
musical  ear  perceives,  without  an  effort,  what  is  con 
gruous  or  incongruous  in  the  harmonies  of  sounds." 
The  Boston  Law  Reporter  also  commends  them  for 
that  thorough  and  logical  precision,  as  well  as  fertility 
of  illustration,  which  evinces  the  mind  of  a  true  legal 
philosopher,  no  less  than  the  various  accomplishments 
of  the  skilful  lawyer. 

In  1849,  Mr.  Wallace  spent  a  twelvemonth  in  Eu 
rope,  in  the  study  of  its  monuments  of  art,  its  science, 
its  natural  productions,  and  its  social  condition.  He 
passed  the  time  mainly  in  England  and  Germany, 
without,  however,  neglecting  Italy  and  France.  It  was 
in  the  latter  country  that  his  interest  in  social  philoso 
phy  led  him  to  form  the  acquaintance  of  the  eminent 
speculator  Comte,  who  appears  to  have  conceived  the 
most  exalted  opinion  of  his  abilities,  and  to  have  formed 
the  highest  hopes  of  his  usefulness,  as  a  disciple  of  the 
Positive  Philosophy,  in  the  propagation  of  it  in  this 
country.  But  Mr.  Wallace  was  one  of  those  independ 
ent  disciples  who,  thinking  for  themselves,  are  not  al 
ways  the  most  profitable  to  a  master.  He  adopted 
Comte's  scientific  methods,  so  far  as  they  tended  to 
render  all  the  moral  as  well  as  physical  sciences  in 
ductive,  but  he  adopted  them  with  considerable  and 
even  revolutionary  departures  from  Comte's  own  appli 
cations  of  them.  In  a  brief  but  well-considered  letter 
to  Dr.  McClintock,  of  the  Methodist  Quarterly  Review, 
he  has  stated  to  what  extent  he  received  the  Positivist 
doctrine,  approving  the  beautiful  and  comprehensive 
classification  of  the  sciences  which  Comte  has  given, 


306  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

but  qualifying  his  definition  of  the  "three  stages"  of 
humanitary  progress,  and  vehemently  protesting  against 
the  political  and  religious  errors  into  which  he  fell.  He 
considers  the  "Positive  Philosophy"  as  a  greater  work 
than  the  "Positive  Politics,"  and  that  Comte  is,  in  the 
former,  an  oracle,  and  in  the  latter  a  babbler.  In  this 
he  scarcely  does  justice  to  his  author,  whose  system  is 
in  nothing  else  more  remarkable  than  its  logical  con 
sistency,  so  that  if  you  grant  its  fundamental  principles, 
you  are  irresistibly  led  to  nearly  all  its  conclusions. 
Mr.  Wallace  was  saved,  by  his  earnest  religious  belief, 
from  the  more  dangerous  tendencies  of  Comteism,  and 
we  regret  that  he  did  not  live  to  complete  what  he  had 
projected — the  application  of  scientific  method  to  the 
history  of  politics  and  religion. 

When  Mr.  WTallace  returned  to  this  country  in  1850, 
he  made  arrangements  with  his  publishers  for  the  issue 
of  a  series  of  works  on  commercial  and  civil  law,  after 
he  should  have  completed  his  knowledge  of  those  sub 
jects  by  a  residence  of  some  years  in  one  of  the  German 
universities.  But  in  the  spring  of  1852,  his  eyesight 
failing,  and  his  general  health  becoming  otherwise  de 
ranged,  he  was  forced  to  set  out  on  a  tour  of  foreign 
travel.  He  sailed  on  the  I3th  of  November,  reached 
England  in  the  latter  part  of  the  month,  and,  in 
December,  repaired  to  Paris.  His  health  was,  un 
fortunately,  made  worse,  not  better,  by  the  change. 
Travelling  exhausted  him,  and  repose  brought  on  fits 
of  extreme  depression.  He  wrote  to  the  only  surviving 
member  of  his  family  to  corne  out  and  take  care  of  him, 
and  three  days  after  despatching  the  letter,  "suddenly 
expired."  The  news  of  his  demise — so  unexpected — • 
gave  a  shock  to  the  small  circle  of  his  friends  and 
admirers  ;  for  his  immediate  friends  had  never  been 
many  ;  but  such  as  were  admitted  to  his  intimacy,  loved 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  307 

him  with  warmth  and  tenderness.  His  extraordinary 
accomplishments,  too,  were  -making  him  gradually 
known  :  the  enthusiastic  eulogies  of  Comte,  copied 
into  the  journals,  had  introduced  his  name  to  popular 
respect ;  and  when  it  was  announced  that  one  so  va 
riously  endowed,  so  rich  in  learning,  so  vigorous  in 
power  of  thought,  so  sincere  in  his  sense  of  religious 
duty,  and  withal  so  young,  was  no  more,  it  was  felt  that 
death  had  left  a  painful  void,  even  by  those  who  knew 
little  of  the  man  or  his  writings. 

"  His  leaf  has  perished  in  the  green, 
And,  while  we  breathe  beneath  the  sun, 
The  world  which  credits  what  is  done, 
Is  cold  to  all  that  might  have  been  !" 

In  person  Mr.  Wallace  was  slim,  but  not  tall  ;  his 
face  was  sharp  and  of  a  saturnine  expression  ;  and  his 
manners  were  cold,  until  intimacy  had  broken  through 
the  outer  walls  of  his  reserve,  when  he  became  frank, 
cordial,  and  communicative.  His  conversation,  illus 
trated  by  an  immense  range  of  knowledge,  was  in  the 
highest  degree  both  interesting  and  instructive.  It  was 
so  full  and  yet  so  accurate,  whatever  its  topic,  that  you 
left  him  with  an  impression  that  that  topic  had  been  the 
specialty  of  his  studies.  Whether  he  talked  or  wrote 
on  law,  literature,  the  fine  arts,  philosophy,  religion, 
mathematics,  the  natural  sciences,  poetry,  or  even  mili 
tary  art,  his  reading  had  been  so  extensive,  his  memory 
was  so  tenacious,  his  grasp  of  principles  and  details 
alike  so  firm,  that  he  seemed  to  be  talking  or  writing 
of  his  favorite  theme.  Yet,  he  never  paraded  his  ac 
quisitions,  nor  infringed  the  strictest  rules  of  propriety 
and  good  taste,  by  self-display.  His  accomplishments, 
like  his  virtues,  were  worn  with  that  graceful  humility 


308  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

which  proceeds  from  high  symmetrical  culture,  refined 
by  habitual  religious  trust. 

The  papers  in  the  book  before  us  were  found  in  Mr. 
Wallace's  portfolio,  after  his  death.  They  had  been 
written  in  America,  but  were  still  unfinished,  "imma 
ture  buds  and  blossoms  shaken  from  the  tree" — says  the 
biographer — "and  green  fruit,  evincing  what  the  har 
vest  might  have  been."  They  were  immature,  however, 
only  in  the  sense  of  not  being  complete.  In  thought 
and  manner  they  exhibit  a  rich  autumnal  ripeness. 
Precise  in  language,  -and  thoroughly  informed  by 
thought,  they  glow,  also,  with  the  warmest  imagination 
and  feeling.  We  know  of  few  books  which  speak  so 
intelligently  and  yet  so  genially  of  Art — which  show  a 
more  lively  sensibility  to  the  influences  of  nature,  and 
a  heartier  relish  for  the  great  works  of  man — which 
combine  so  much  poetic  feeling  with  philosophic  dis 
crimination,  or  keen  critical  sagacity  with  tender  and 
lofty  religious  enthusiasm.  In  the  abstract  discussion 
of  the  nature  and  aims  of  Art,  in  the  almost  technical 
description  of  the  mighty  cathedrals  of  Europe,  in  the 
impressive  scene-painting  of  the  Alps,  and  in  the  fine 
characterizations  of  the  great  painters  of  Italy,  he  appears 
equally  at  home — always  familiar  with  his  subject,  and 
with  the  learning  about  it  ;  always  truthful  in  tone, 
always  vigorous  in  thought  as  well  as  just  and  appropri 
ate  in  style,  and  not  rarely,  when  the  occasion  justified 
it  (as  in  what  is  said  of  the  Roman  forum),  grandly 
eloquent. 

The  greater  part  of  Mr.  Wallace's  work  is  devoted  to 
Art,  and  the  interesting  questions  involved  in  it,  both  as 
a  philosophy  and  a  practice.  He  has  entitled  the  lead 
ing  essay,  "Art,  an  emanation  of  Religious  Affection  :" 
illustrating  the  maxim  by  an  elaborate  review  of  its 
general  forms,  in  their  most  flourishing  periods.  A 


Horace  Binncy  Wallace.  309 

second  paper  argues  that  "Art  is  symbolical,  not  imi 
tative."  A  third  discusses  the  principle  of  "  Beauty  in 
works  of  Art;"  while  a  fourth  relates  to  "  the  law  of 
the  development  of  Gothic.  Architecture.''  These  are 
followed  by  studies  of  special  works  of  art,  such  as  the 
great  cathedrals  of  the  continent,  and  the  master  works 
of  painting  in  Italy.  Together  they  constitute  a  treatise 
on  the  whole  subject  of  Art — its  origin  or  genesis  in  the 
human  mind— its  characteristic  property  or  function — 
the  nature  of  that  beauty  which  is  its  object — and  the 
qualities  which,  in  its  best  actual  works,  move  our 
admiration  and  delight. 

The  art-creating  faculty,  Mr.  Wallace  says,  is  not  the 
same  as  the  rational  or  scientific,  whose  office  is  per 
ception  and  inference,  but  a  more  sensitive  and  impas 
sioned  faculty — an 'instinct  holding  a  place  between 
mere  emotion  and  the  clear  intellect,  partaking  of  the 
properties  of  both,  and  combining  them  into  the  unity 
of  its  own  original  character  and  action.  Yet,  twofold 
as  its  affinities  are,  it  is  a  single  and  peculiar  faculty, 
given  to  some  men  and  withheld  from  others,  which  no 
process  of  intellectual  cudgelling  can  create,  no  theory 
of  education  develop,  no  culture  of  sentiments  confer, 
but  which,  as  is  the  case  with  the  other  great  gifts  of  the 
Spirit,  "bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  you  hear  the 
sound  thereof,  but  cannot  tell  whence  it  cometh  nor 
whither  it  goeth."  It  is  for  this  reason  that  men  of 
genius  are  a  mystery  to  themselves  and  a  perpetual 
miracle  to  the  world. 

But  history  shows  that  as  this  art-creating  faculty  is 
more  active  and  prolific  in  certain  men  than  in  others, 
so  it  is  vouchsafed  to  certain  nations  in  richer  measure 
than  to  others  ;  there  are  certain  golden  ages,  when  it 
blossoms  and  blooms  with  a  fervid  luxuriance  and 
splendor.  Nor  does  it  spring  up  suddenly,  in  all  its 


3io  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

completeness,  as  if  it  were  an  arbitrary  inspiration,  but 
gradually,  from  rude  beginnings,  until  it  advances  to 
that  pitch  of  excellence  which  may  be  called  perfection. 
"  Continuing  in  bright  and  flowing  vigor  for  a  limited 
time,  then  flickering  and  going  out  like  a  lamp,  or 
drooping  and  dying  like  a  plant,  or  breathing  and  fad 
ing  away,  like  a  vision-haunted  slumber  of  humanity  ; 
thai  light  no  efforts  can  again  relume  :  to  that  sweet, 
half-conscious  dream  of  glory,  not  all  the  drowsy  syrups 
in  the  world  can  medicine  once  more  the  faculties  of 
that  people." 

What,  then,  is  the  origin  and  nature  of  this  artistic 
activity,  and  how  is  it  manifested  ?  Mr.  Wallace 
answers  the  first  part  of  the  question,  by  saying  that 
''the  art-faculty  is  nothing  else  but  earnest  religious 
feeling,  acting  imaginatively,  or  imagination  working 
under  the  elevating  and  kindling  influences  of  religious 
feeling."  There  is  no  instance  in  history,  he  avers,  of 
a  single  manifestation  of  art-power,  except  among 
people  and  in  ages  where  religious  enthusiasm  and 
religiousness  of  nature  were  prominent  characteristics. 
He  adds,  also,  in  italics,  by  way  of  emphasis,  that  there 
is  no  instance  of  supreme  excellence  in  art  having  been 
reached,  excepting  where  "  the  subject  of  the  artisfs 
thoughts  and  toils — the  type  which  he  brought  up  to  perfec 
tion — was  to  him  an  object  of  worship,  or  a  sacred  thing 
immediately  connected  with  his  holiest  reverence."  Thus, 
the  cause  of  the  special  superiority  of  the  Greeks  in 
sculpture  was  the  anthropomorphous  character  of  their 
theology,  which  made  the  human  form  an  image  of 
what  they  worshipped.  So,  too,  the  Madonna — the 
inspired  and  inspiring  centre  of  Italian  painting  in  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries — was  an  image  of 
worship  ;  and  the  controlling  thought  of  the  stupen 
dous  and  beautiful  cathedrals  of  the  middle  ages,  as  well 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  3 1 1 

as  of  the  Athenian  temples,  identified  their  sacred  forms 
with  the  residence  and  glory  of  the  Divinity. 

Consequent  upon  this  truth,  and  in  answer  to  the 
second  part  of  the  question  above,  Mr.  Wallace  confines 
the  great  general  forms  of  Art  to  architecture,  sculpture, 
and  painting,  which,  he  alleges,  are  the  three  forms 
best  adapted  to  the  display  of  its  character.  Literature, 
on  the  one  hand,  he  thinks  too  intellectual,  and  music, 
on  the  other,  too  sensuous  to  exhibit  "that  fusion  of 
the  mental  and  material,  that  perfect  balance  of  the 
sensible  and  thoughtful,  which  art  requires."  Only  in 
these  three  departments  just  named,  do  the  actual  evolu 
tions  of  art  exhibit  an  excellence  so  surpassing  and 
irresistible  as  to  render  it  a  nature  and  existence  by 
itself.  It  is  only  in  the  ages  of  Greek  sculpture  and 
architecture,  of  Italian  painting,  and  the  Gothic  cathe 
drals,  that  we  discover  genuine  evidences  of  artistic 
inspiration  ;  only  there  that  we  encounter  works  so 
complete  in  their  beauty,  so  exalted  in  significance,  and 
so  absolute  in  splendor,  as  to  fill  our  deepest  capacities 
of  emotion,  and  satisfy  the  loftiest  demands  of  the 
mind.  These  "stand  in  the  mystery  of  an  inherent 
perfection,  participating  in  an  apparent  divinity  in  the 
inscrutableness  of  their  nature,  as  well  as  in  the 
over-swaying  might  of  their  moral  power.  Through 
them  the  mind  runs  upward,  along  the  viewless 
chains  of  spiritual  sympathy,  till  it  loses  itself  in  the 
Infinite." 

We  propose  to  say  a  word  or  two  of  these  important 
views,  less  by  way  of  contradiction  than  of  expansion  ; 
for,  while  they  are  fundamentally  correct,  they  are  yet 
not  stated  with  all  the  fulness  and  precision  of  an  ade 
quate  philosophy. 

It  is  proper  to  speak  of  Art  as  an  emanation  of  religious 
feeling,  because  of  the  signal  and  intimate  union  which 


3 1 2  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

subsists  between  them,  whether  we  consider  their 
sources  in  the  human  mind,  or  their  more  concrete 
manifestations.  But  we  cannot  say  that  this  is  the 
whole  truth.  A  great  many  other  influences  besides 
religion  are  concerned  in  the  production  of  a  vigorous 
state  of  the  arts.  It  is  also  true,  that  the  great  artist 
finds,  in  the  object  of  his  labor,  an  image  of  worship, 
or  of  devout  and  earnest  feeling  ;  but  this,  again,  is  not 
the  whole  truth,  inasmuch  as  the  great  artist  requires  a 
great  deal  more  than  this  single  qualification. 

In  a  certain  general  sense,  all  the  achievements  of 
the  human  mind,  all  the  elements  and  characteristics  of 
the  different  civilizations,  are  the  products  of  religious 
belief.  The  intellectual  apprehension  or  theory  which 
a  nation  forms  of  its  relations  to  the  universe,  or,  in 
other  words,  its  theology  or  doctrine  of  the  gods,  is 
what  determines  its  kind  and  degree  of  development. 
This  measures  the  height  to  which  it  shall  rise  in  the 
scale  of  existences,  moulds  its  manners  and  laws,  and 
marks  the  limits  of  its  moral  and  practical  activity.  If 
that  theory  be  fetichtic,  as  with  the  savages  ;  or  poly 
theistic,  as  among  the  Greeks  ;  or  simply  monotheistic, 
as  among  the  Jews  and  Mohammedans ;  or,  again,  a 
strictly  historical  theism,  founded  upon  the  actual  incar 
nation  of  the  divine  in  the  human,  as  in  Christianity, 
we  know,  with  more  or  less  precise  approximation  in 
each  case,  what  the  contemporary  science,  literature, 
customs,  government,  are  likely  to  be.  As  religion  is 
the  deepest  impulse  of  the  soul,  overmastering  all 
others,  even  in  the  lowest  states  of  human  society,  as 
our  relations  to  the  invisible  world  are  more  profound 
and  vast  than  all  other  relations,  controlling  us,  by  their 
hopes  and  fears,  more  energetically  than  any  wants  of 
the  body,  or  any  ties  of  worldly  affection  or  interest,  so 
our  conception  of  these  relations,  or  our  theology, 


Horace  Binncy  Wallace.  313 

masters  and  controls  all  other  conceptions — the  forms 
of  art  among  the  rest,  and  more  than  the  rest,  because 
of  its  more  sensitive  and  impressible  character.  Thus, 
the  tragedies  of  Eschylus  are  moulded  upon  the  ancient 
idea  of  a  stern  and  irresistible  destiny,  which  underlies 
them,  like  the  deep  bass  of  an  air,  and  they  are  what 
they  are  because  of  that  idea.  The  tragedies  of  Shaks- 
peare,  on  the  other  hand,  breathe  of  a  personal  God,  in 
whom  a  living  justice,  consulting  the  interests  of  human 
freedom,  has  supplanted  a  blind  fate.  Yet  we  can 
hardly  maintain  that  the  ancient  conviction  of  destiny 
originated  the  plays  of  Eschylus,  any  more  than  we  can 
say  that  Christianity  originated  those  of  Shakspeare. 
They  respectively  controlled  the  poets'  views  of  the  char 
acter  of  man,  but  they  did  not  create  or  give  birth  to  the 
inner  life  of  the  poets.  For  though  the  artist  takes  the 
form  of  his  thought  generally  from  the  religion  and  life 
of  his  age,  the  inspiration  of  it,  that  which  imbues  him 
with  something  of  a  prophetic  ken,  rising  above  and  look 
ing  beyond  his  age,  comes  more  immediately  from  God, 
who  endows  him  with  his  peculiar  and  marvellous  genius. 
Were  it  an  exclusive  truth  that  art  emanates  from 
religion,  the  most  religious  ages  of  the  world  would 
have  been  the  most  artistic,  and  the  most  artistic  again 
the  most  religious.  Does  it  appear,  however,  that  the 
age  of  Pericles,  in  Greece,  when  the  arts  reached  their 
highest  bloom,  was  the  age  most  earnestly  receptive  of 
the  Greek  mythology?  Or,  was  the  age  of  Leo  the 
Tenth,  in  Italy,  that  in  which  Christian  faith  was  more 
active  and  powerful  than  it  ever  had  been  before  ?  No 
doubt  a  serious,  heartfelt  interest  is  felt  by  the  artist  in 
the  religious  sentiment  which  he  embodies,  for,  without 
that,  there  would  be  no  motive  in  his  mind  ;  but  a 
combination  of  other  influences  concurs  also  in  the 
grander  development  of  art.  To  the  sincere  and  ear- 
14* 


314  Horace  Binncy  Wallace. 

nest  popular  sentiment,  whether  religious  or  humanitary: 
must  be  added  a  vigorous  national  life,  stimulating 
energy  and  hope,  and  an  access  of  wealth  sufficient  to 
give  the  repose  and  culture  which  the  laborious  yet 
peaceful  nature  of  artistic  pursuit  demands.  In  short, 
then,  we  should  say,  that  the  great  eras  of  art  have  been 
eras  of  a  universal,  intellectual,  and  moral  excitement, 
when  the  imagination  was  kindled  by  some  great  sym 
pathy,  and  the  whole  soul,  not  of  the  artist  only,  but  of 
the  nation,  aroused  into  an  intense  and  almost  preter 
natural  life. 

For  the  same  reason,  when  it  is  said  that  the  artist 
finds  an  image  of  worship  in  the  object  of  his  labor,  we 
recognize  a  great  truth,  but  not  the  entire  truth.  It  is 
true  of  certain  displays  of  art,  but  not  of  all  art.  If 
this  saying  were  universally  true,  there  could  be  no  art 
but  such  as  should  be  directly  and  consciously  employed 
in  the  celebration  of  the  Divinity.  But,  when  Agasias, 
or  whoever  it  was,  modelled  his  Fighting  Gladiator, 
when  Angelo  chiselled  that  wonderful  Bacchus  at 
Florence,  when  Cellini  chased  some  exquisite  golden 
cup,  when  Raphael  painted  the  Parnassus  in  one  of  the 
Stanzas  of  the  Vatican,  when  Mozart  composed  the 
Don  Giovanni,  or  Shakspeare  wrote  Othello — we  doubt 
whether  the  artists  saw  in  their  objects  the  remotest 
image  of  anything  to  be  worshipped.  Their  themes  are 
not  in  any  way  connected  (and  the  same  might  be  said 
of  a  thousand  other  immortal  examples)  with  any  living 
mythology  ;  yet,  these  were  works  of  art,  and  some  of 
them  of  very  high  art.  Can  any  one  deny  that  a  very 
fine  and  even  noble  species  of  art  was  attained  by  the 
Flemish  and  Dutch  painters,  whose  subjects  were 
mostly  drawn  from  incidents  of  ordinary  life,  such  as 
the  fetes  of  the  peasantry,  or  the  manoeuvres  of  dragoons  ? 
Mr.  Alston,  no  mean  judge  in  such  things,  and  who, 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  316 

if  we  may  infer  from  his  own  exalted  works,  was  not  at 
all  inclined  to  lessen  the  deep  religious  significance  of 
art,  speaks  in  one  of  his  lectures  of  a  picture  by 
Ostade,  in  which  the  figures  are  a  woman  nursing  her 
child,  and  the  carcass  of  a  hog  hung  up  to  dry, 
where  every  accessory  hints  of  low  culinary  occupation  ; 
and  yet  he  speaks  of  it  as  a  genuine  work  of  art,  full 
of  "magical  charms,"  displaying  a  very  "sorcery  of 
color,"  and  exciting  a  depth  of  "pleasurable  emotion 
which  passes  off  into  poetic  dream  !"  He  contrasts  the 
originality  and  invention  it  discovers  with  the  same 
qualities  in  the  Death  of  Ananias,  by  Raphael.  Now, 
what  he  means  by  this,  and  what  we  mean  in  our 
argument  thus  far  is,  that  the  functions  of  art  are  uni 
versal,  ranging  from  the  expression  of  the  highest 
religious  adoration  to  that  of  the  lowest  every-day 
delight  which  is  in  itself  innocent.  No  definition  of 
art,  therefore,  can  be  accepted  as  adequate,  which  con 
fines  it  to  its  higher  types  alone,  or  which  excludes 
those  lesser  displays  of  it  commonly  condemned  by  a 
pragmatic  criticism  as  low  and  trivial. 

In  order  to  show  the  relations  of  art  to  religion,  and 
to  get  at  the  grounds  of  that  seeming  exaggeration 
which  designates  all  art  as  divine,  we  should  be  obliged 
to  enter  upon  a  minute  philosophical  inquiry,  for  which 
we  have  now  neither  time  nor  space.  But  we  may  sug 
gest  our  view  of  the  matter,  so  far  as  to  render  what  we 
may  say  intelligible,  in  few  words. 

Man,  as  the  creature  of  God,  is  the  subject  of  a  two 
fold  life — the  first  natural,  which  connects  him  through 
his  body  and  senses  with  the  physical  world,  and  through 
his  affections  with  his  fellow-man — and  the  second, 
ideal  or  spiritual,  which  connects  him,  through  faith 
in  an  infinite  Goodness,  Wisdom,  and  Beauty,  to  God. 
It  is  this  second  life  which  gives  him  the  distinctive 


3 1 6  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

mark  of  his  manhood.  His  relation  to  nature,  or  to 
his  physical  organization,  he  shares  with  the  vegetables ; 
and  his  relations  to  society,  so  far  as  society  is  simply 
natural,  or  not  yet  raised  into  a  spiritual  fellowship,  he 
has  in  common  with  many  animals  ;  but  his  belief  in 
an  unlimited  goodness  and  truth,  and  his  power  of  act 
ing  in  obedience  to  that  belief,  is  what  especially  consti 
tutes  his  humanity.  The  vegetable  and  the  animal  have 
no  existence  superior  to  thejr  physical  organization  ; 
they  are  the  slaves  of  that,  and,  when  the  wants  of  that 
are  satisfied,  they  are  complete  and  happy.  Man,  too, 
in  so  far  as  his  existence  is  subject  to  his  organization 
and  its  corresponding  affections,  is  only  a  higher  kind 
of  vegetable  and  animal.  But  being  made,  as  he  is, 
capable  of  perceiving  by  his  reason,  and  of  obeying  by 
his  freedom,  ends  which  are  above  his  merely  animal 
and  social  wants,  he  becomes  an  ideal  or  spiritual 
being,  which  means  a  true  man. 

Now  the  characteristics  of  the  lower  sphere  of  life  are, 
that  it  is  not  only  limited,  but  exists  solely  by  limitation  ; 
that  it  is  not  only  dependent  in  each  of  its  particulars 
upon  something  out  of  itself,  but  that  the  very  end  of 
its  existence  is  subservience  ;  that  it  is  not  only  transi 
tory,  but  that  incessant  change  is  the  law  of  its  life  ; 
and  consequently,  that  it  is  not  only  unsatisfying,  but, 
if  trusted  in,  disgusting,  venomous,  and  deadly.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  characteristics  of  the  higher  sphere, 
are  an  infinite  freedom,  an  existence  in  and  for  itself, 
an  unchanging  permanence,  and  a  fulness  of  activity 
and  delight,  which  the  Apostle  describes  as  unspeakable. 
Our  humanity,  therefore,  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  genuine 
humanity,  not  a  mere  animality,  perpetually  aspires  to 
this  upper  world  of  Love,  and  Truth,  and  Beauty, 
revealed  to  its  hope,  and  incessantly  beckoning  it  on 
ward  and  upward. 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  317 

Still,  as  we  are  made  primarily  the  denizens  of  nature 
— as  we  are  not  God  in  ourselves,  but  his  creatures — 
we  can  know  goodness,  truth,  and  beauty  only  as  we 
reproduce  them  in  nature,  or  as  they  are  fixed  and  em 
bodied  in  act.     We  learn  Love  by  loving,  and  Truth  by 
living  truly,  and  Beauty  by  realizing  it  in  some  actual 
type.     They  are,  before  that,  not  objects  of  direct  con 
sciousness,  of  immediate  perception,  but  of  vague  long 
ing  and   desire — a  blind    hunger  of  the  soul,   which 
craves,  but  has  not  yet  found  its  food.     They  are  not 
ours,    but   God's ;    yet   they   become   approximatively 
ours,  as  we  translate  them,  by  prayer  and  effort,   and 
the  putting  away  of  untruth,   wickedness,   and  imper 
fection  from  our  lives,  into  the  natural  life.     The  en 
deavor  to  appropriate  them,   however,   is  our  normal 
work — is  the  end  for  which  we  were  made — in  which 
we  find  our  true  freedom  and  joy ; — while  the  threefold 
aspect  of  this  endeavor,  as  it  is  directed  to  the  supernal 
Love,  or  Wisdom,  or  Beauty,  we  call,  respectively,  re 
ligion,  philosophy,  and  art.     These  move  in  the  same 
sphere,  they  spring  from  the  same  source — the  immor 
tal  fountain  of  life — but  they  operate  in  different  modes 
and  on  different  planes.      Religion  deals  primarily  with 
the  heart,  without  separating  itself  from  the  intellect  and 
senses,   and  stands  nearest  to  God  ;  philosophy  works 
with  the  intellect,  and  dwells  in  the  intermediate  world 
of  thought ;  while  art  comes  down  to  the  senses,  and 
flows  through  all  the  forms  of  sensible  nature,  trans 
forming  and  glorifying  them  with  soul.     Religion  seeks 
to  reduce  the  facts  of  human  life,  inward  and  outward, 
to  a  universal  unity  of  love  ;   philosophy,   to  the  uni 
versal  unity  of  truth  ;  and  art,  to  a  universal  harmony 
of  sensible  appearance.      In  essence  and  derivation  they 
are  all  one — like  streams  which  rise  from  the  same 
sacred  spring,  but  they  flow  through  separate  channels 


318  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

and  in  diverse  directions  toward  distinct  realizations. 
They  all  come  from  God,  and  they  all  end  in  life  or 
action. 

We  see  from  this  why  it  is  not  unusual  or  irreverent 
to  speak  of  "divine  philosophy,"  and  "divine  art,"  as 
well  as  of  a  divine  or  holy  religion — not  because  the 
immediate  object,  in  any  philosophical  or  artistic  re 
search,  is  "an  image  of  worship," — but  because  the 
ultimate  tendency  of  it  is  to  emancipate  our  spirit  from 
the  fetters  of  its  finite  condition.  It  is  through  philos 
ophy,  or  its  handmaid,  science,  that  we  subdue  the 
stormy  and  truculent  antagonisms  of  nature,  who  would 
kill  us  by  her  frosts  and  whelm  us  in  her  tempests  if 
she  could,  till  they  have  become  the  willing  servitors  of 
every  human  use.  So,  too,  by  means  of  science,  we 
lift  society  out  of  brute  gregariousness  into  an  organism 
of  the  sweetest  and  tenderest  humanities.  And  so 
again,  through  art,  we  breathe  over  the  earth  the-  free 
atmosphere  of  heaven,  people  its  glades  with  angelic 
living  shapes,  and  tune  its  myriad  voices  into  "halle 
lujahs  and  sevenfold  harmonies"  of  song.  All  true 
philosophy,  and  all  true  art,  then,  have  the  same  ulti 
mate  aim  with  the  one  true  religion. 

In  a  deeper  sense,  however,  than  this,  art  deserves 
the  epithet  of  divine ;  for  it  raises  us  to  an  activity 
which  approaches  more  nearly  than  any  other  to  the 
highest  that  we  can  conceive  of  the  real  divine  life  ;  of 
that  life  which,  as  St.  Augustine  says,  per  cuncta  diffu- 
sus,  sine  labor e  regens,  et  sine  onere  coniinens,  is  sufficient 
unto  itself,  having  neither  bodily  limits  nor  social  de 
pendences,  dwelling  forever  in  its  fulness  of  absolute 
perfection,  and  yet  flowing  forth  forever  in  infinite 
streams  of  love,  and  splendor,  and  joy.  The  artistic 
life  is  the  image  of  this  supernal  glory,  because  of  its 
.free  spontaneous  productivity.  It  has  its  end  in  itself;  it 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  319 

exists  for  no  extraneous  purpose  ;  it  inhabits  its  own 
independent  world  ;  it  finds  in  its  own  bosom  an  im 
measurable  delight ;  and  though  the  reconciliation  of 
form  and  thought,  of  real  and  ideal,  of  matter  and 
spirit,  it  annuls  forever  the  contradictions  of  actual  ex 
istence.  Therefore  is  it  in  every  work  of  art  that  you 
are  impressed  with  its  unalterable  repose,  its  calm 
majesty  and  grace,  its  inexhaustible  joyousness,  and  its 
serene  freedom. 

Art  being  a  universal  mediator  between  the  interior 
world  of  aspiration  and  faith,  and  the  exterior  world  of 
sensible  experience,  we  cannot  limit  its  functions,  as 
Mr.  Wallace  has  done  (though  somewhat  doubtingly), 
to  the  mere  arts  of  design.  Architecture,  sculpture, 
and  painting  are  the  most  impressive  forms  of  art,  but 
they  do  not  exhaust  those  forms.  The  vast  realm  of 
beauty  which  music  evokes,  when  sentiment  marries 
sound,  must  not  be  forgotten,  nor  the  still  vaster  worlds, 
the  constellated  worlds  of  poetry,  peopled  with  radiant 
creatures  who  use  the  speech  and  enact  the  dramas  of 
the  gods.  It  would  be  a  fatal  oversight,  indeed,  to 
reckon  the  grosser,  the  more  material,  the  more  ob 
jective  arts  among  "the  glories  of  our  mortal  state," 
and  omit  the  more  subtile,  subjective,  spiritual,  delicate, 
and  profound.  Mr.  Wallace's  fine  sense  deserts  him 
(as  the  hesitated  doubt  seems  to  imply),  when  he  de 
cides  that  music  is  too  sensual,  and  poetry  too  intel 
lectual,  to  be  considered  among  the  number  of  the 
arts  ;  and  still  more  so,  when  he  assigns  as  a  reason  for 
this  sentence  of  banishment,  that  they  miss  "that  fusion 
of  mental  and  material,  that  perfect  balance  of  the 
sensible  and  the  thoughtful,  which  art  requires/' 

It  might  be  replied,  in  detail  :  first,  that  music  is  less 
sensuous  than  either  architecture,  sculpture,  or  paint 
ing,  and  more  variously  emotional ;  secondly,  that 


320  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

architecture  itself  does  not  exhibit  that  complete  fusion 
of  mental  and  material  of  which  he  speaks,  and  is  at 
best  only  a  symbol  of  it ;  and  thirdly,  that  poetry, 
though  more  intellectual  than  other  arts,  has  yet  much 
to  do  with  the  affections,  the  fancy,  and  the  sensuous 
imagination.  But,  instead  of  exposing  the  several  in 
accuracies  of  this  judgment,  we  prefer  to  indicate  what 
we  regard  as  the  source  of  the  error. 

It  is  this  :  that  our  author  has  failed  to  treat  of  the 
several  species  of  art,  as  parts  of  an  organic  whole, 
necessary  to  each  other,  because  necessary  to  the  com 
plete  expression  of  man's  artistic  capacity.  Confined  to 
the  arts  of  design,  art  is  like  the  torso  dug  from  ancient 
ruins,  or  like  the  early  pipe  of  Pan,  beautiful  so  far  as 
it  goes,  yet  not  the  rounded  statue,  yet  not  the  full-toned 
organ  instinct  with  every  sound.  No  single  art,  con 
sidered  in  itself,  is  adequate  to  the  utterance  of  our 
boundless  spirit.  Each  art  has  its  circle  and  domain, 
within  which  it  gives  us  glimpses  of  the  eternal  heights, 
but  beyond  which  it  is  opaque  and  blind.  Each  art, 
beyond  itself,  craves  and  promises  a  brother.  Thus, 
architecture  tells  us,  as  in  the  Greek  temple,  of  the 
graceful  majesty  and  serene  repose  of  the  gods  ;  or,  as 
in  the  Gothic  minster,  it  lifts  our  souls  in  adoration 
and  a  tumultuous  throng  of  praises  to  the  Infinite  One. 
It  needs  sculpture,  however,  to  inform  us  that  these 
gods  are  men,  with  the  "high  passions  and  high 
actions"  of  men,  or  that  the  Infinite  has  incorporated 
itself  in  human  shape.  Sculpture,  again,  with  its 
sightless  orbs  and  moveless  body,  has  a  limitation, 
where  painting  comes  in  to  fill  those  eyes  with  tender 
lustre,  and  animate  those  limbs  with  a  fresher  glow. 
Yet  the  deepest  inner  world  of  sentiment  and  thought 
no  painting  nor  sculpture  can  reach,  and  only  the  airy 
wands  of  poesy  and  sound,  penetrating  to  the  inmost 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  321 

of  our  being,  bring  forth  spirits  too  subtile  and  swift  to 
be  grasped  by  any  but  ethereal  hands.  For,  it  is  sin 
gular  in  the  relations  of  the  arts,  as  Hegel  has  admi 
rably  argued  in  his  Esthetics,  that  there  is  a  march  or 
progress,  both  in  respect  of  their  sensible  materials  and 
their  powers  of  expression,  from  the  gross,  the  con 
crete,  the  objective,  the  material,  to  the  fine,  the  ab 
stract,  the  subjective,  and  the  spiritual.  Architecture, 
dealing  with  matter  in  its  three  dimensions  of  length, 
breadth,  and  height,  and  as  subject  of  necessity  to  the 
law  of  gravitation,  enjoys  only  a  circumscribed  liberty 
of  expression.  Even  in  the  best  examples  of  it,  as  in 
the  cathedrals,  the  sentiment  and  thought  are  ever 
more  or  less  dominated  by  the  form  ;  there  is  a  ten 
dency  in  the  technical  and  constructive  to  prevail  over 
the  imaginative  and  the  reflective  ;  the  inward  signifi 
cance  is  apt  to  be  overlaid  by  the  outward  representation. 
A  larger  freedom  in  the  use  of  the  material  and  a  nicer 
expression  is  obtained,  in  sculpture,  when  the  idea  and 
the  form  are  made  to  coalesce  ;  but  sculpture  itself  does 
not  transcend  the  corporeal,  or  what  the  corporeal  con 
tains.  In  painting,  on  the  other  hand,  while  it  retains 
the  corporeal,  so  far  as  that  is  needed  for  its  purposes, 
it  yet  escapes  from  the  coarser  properties  of  matter, 
deals  with  light  and  shade,  and  the  magic  of  color, 
instead  of  with  ponderous  masses,  and  imparts  to  forms 
a  flexibility  and  freedom,  which  enlarges,  almost  mir 
aculously,  its  powers  of  combination  and  its  reaches  of 
spiritual  utterance.  Yet  there  are  sentiments  and  shades 
of  sentiment,  delicacies  and  grandeurs  of  emotion,  suc 
cessions  and  fluxes  of  inward  experience,  which  color 
seeks  in  vain  to  convey,  and  which  the  finer  medium 
of  sound  alone  can  interpret ;  until  the  soul,  withdraw 
ing  more  and  more  into  itself,  and  dispensing  more 
and  more  with  external  media,  speaks  through  signs  of 
14* 


322  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

sound  only,  or  the  viewless,  intangible  word.  As  in 
architecture  we  saw  the  objective  dominate,  so  in  poetry 
we  see  the  subjective  prevail,  that  art,  as  a  whole,  may 
exhaust  the  domain  of  nature,  and  claim  the  sovereignty 
of  both  her  inner  and  outer  worlds. 

The  oversight  of  Mr.  Wallace  in  excluding  music  and 
poetry  from  the  circle  of  the  arts,  has  led  him  into  an 
other  mistake — quite  common  among  the  writers  on 
art  just  now — that  of  depreciating  the  artistic  attain 
ments  of  the  moderns.  It  is  almost  a  cant  of  the  times 
to  assert  that  art  worthy  of  the  name  no  longer  exists. 
Mr.  Ruskin,  among  the  rest,  divides  the  eras  of  art  into 
the  classical,  the  medieval,  and  the  modern,  and  com 
pares  them,  as  a  bad  grammarian  might  do,  as  good, 
better,  worst.  Classicism  he  defines  as  embracing  all 
ancient  time,  down  to  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  ; 
medievalism,  as  extending  from  that  to  the  close  of  the 
fifteenth  century  ;  and  modernism,  as  from  then  for 
ward  to  our  own  days.  The  first  was  distinguished,  he 
says,  by  an  earnest  Pagan  faith — the  second,  by  Chris 
tian  faith — and  the  third  by  no  faith.  Consequently,  he 
declares  our  modern  art  to  be  just  no  art  at  all. 

Now,  Mr.  Ruskin  has  said  many  of  the  best  and  some 
of  the  worst  things  that  have  ever  been  said  of  art,  but 
this  is  not  among  his  best.  Mr.  Wallace,  with  whom 
we  are  more  concerned,  virtually  adopts  the  same  prin 
ciple  of  distribution,  by  confining  the  great  epochs  of 
art  to  the  age  of  Pericles,  the  age  of  the  Gothic  cathe 
drals,  and  the  age  of  painting  in  Italy.  It  seems  to  us, 
however,  that  both  writers  take  a  contracted  and  an  un 
fair  view  of  the  matter.  We  shall  say  nothing  of  the 
singular  latitude  which  allows  Mr.  Ruskin  to  class  the 
winged  bulls  of  Nineveh  and  the  monstrous  sphinxes 
of  Egypt  among  the  remains  of  classicism,  nor  shall  we 
contend  that  in  the  arts  of  design  our  modern  eras  may 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  323 

boast  of  works  equal  to  those  of  Phidias  and  Cle- 
omenes,  of  Raphael  and  Angelo  ;  but  we  shall  and  do 
most  earnestly  protest  against  any  philosophy  of  art 
which  excludes  music  and  poetry  from  its  domain,  and, 
on  the  strength  of  such  an  exclusion,  disparages  the 
abilities  and  character  of  the  moderns. 

If  we  were  disposed  to  discuss  the  question  between 
the  ancients  and  moderns,  even  in  respect  to  the  arts  of 
design,  we  should  premise  that  Rubens  and  the  land- 
scapists  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that  Flaxman,  Dan- 
necker,  and  Chantrey,  that  Kaulbach,  Cornelius,  Cou 
ture,  Delacroix,  Turner,  and  Alston,  and  many  other 
eminent  sculptors  and  painters  who  might  be  men 
tioned,  are  not  to  go  for  nothing ;  but  then  we  should 
freely  admit  that  we  have  no  schools  of  plastic  or  pic 
turesque  art  equal  to  the  great  schools  of  antiquity  and 
of  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Having  made  the 
admission,  our  point  would  be  this  :  that  modern  art, 
responsive  to  the  changes  in  the  spirit  of  society,  or  in 
obedience  to  the  greater  spirituality  and  larger  indi 
vidual  freedom  of  the  age,  has  taken  another  form.  It 
has  taken  the  form  of  the  subjective  and  spiritual  arts, 
which  are  certainly  of  equal  dignity  and  worth  with 
'other  arts,  if  not  superior  to  them,  while  it  has  carried 
the  new  forms  to  a  degree  of  vigor  and  excellence  it 
would  be  idle  to  look  for  in  antiquity  or  the  middle 
ages.  When  we  consider  what  a  sun-burst  of  music 
fell  upon  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries, — 
when  we  recall  the  names  of  Palestrina,  Bach,  Handel, 
Haydn,  Mozart,  Beethoven,  Weber,  Bellini,  and  Men 
delssohn, — when  we  remember  what  a  ready  stimulus 
and  upbearing  elasticity  music  affords  to  the  inspirations 
of  thought,  what  a  depth  and  fulness  and  variety  of 
emotion  it  awakens, — what  rapturous  and  graceful 
charms  it  breathes  upon  the  senses,  incapable  through 


324  Horace  Binney  Wallace. 

it  of  any  but  pure  delights, — how,  it  is  not  the  luxury 
of  the  rich,  but  the  household  blessing  of  the  poor — 
cheering,  even  in  its  rudest  strains,  the  swain  at  his 
plough  and  the  village  maiden  at  her  wheel — diffusing 
everywhere  an  exquisite  and  innocent  sympathy, — and 
how,  there  is  no  solitude  which  it  cannot  enliven,  no 
Saul-like  moodiness  which  it  cannot  charm  away,  no 
hardness  of  feeling  which  it  cannot  soften,  no  sorrow 
which  it  cannot  in  some  degree  assuage,  no  joy  which 
it  cannot  spread  through  ten  thousand  hearts,  and  no 
adoration  which  it  cannot  deepen  and  strengthen,  till 
the  soul  is  lifted,  as  on  the  wings  of  the  cherubim,  to 
the  very  presence  of  God, — we  say,  when  we  consider 
all  this,  its  capacity,  its  universality,  its  purity,  its 
power,  we  are  utterly  amazed  at  the  criticism  which 
denies  the  existence  of  modern  art.  But  if  we  turn 
from  music  to  poetry, — if  we  remember  that  Shakspeare, 
whose  mind,  like  the  ocean,  filled  all  the  inlets  and 
creeks  of  our  existence  with  its  own  majestic  glory,  was 
a  modern  ;  that  Spenser  and  Milton,  with  the  immortal 
race  of  bards  which  has  followed  them  in  England,  were 
moderns  ;  that  the  entire  beautiful  literature  in  Ger 
many,  with  Jupiter  Goethe  on  its  throne,  is  of  modern 
growth ;  and  that  this  poetry,  so  multiform,  so  lovely, 
so  grand,  so  humane,  so  fantastic,  so  infinite  in  its  re 
sources  and  its  effects,  is  a  common  possession  of  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  who  can  spell, — -we  are  still 
further  lost  in  wonder  at  the  cries  which  bewail  the  de 
crepitude  and  departure  of  art. 

We  have  no  space  to  dwell  upon  the  theme,  more 
than  to  hint  that  the  great  ages  of  art,  distributed  ac 
cording  to  a  principal  type  in  each  case,  were  the  ages 
of  symbolic  art  in  Egypt ;  of  plastic  art,  in  Greece  ;  of 
constructive  art,  in  the  middle  ages  ;  of  picturesque  art, 
during  the  period  of  transition  from  Catholicism  to 


Horace  Binney  Wallace.  326 

nationalism  ;  and  of  musical  and  poetic  art  since  the 
Reformation.  Considered  in  this  light,  we  see  more 
distinctly  than  in  any  other  way,  how  the  special  form 
and  highest  glory  of  art  grows  directly  out  of  the  spirit 
of  the  time, — how  the  evidences  of  the  Eternal  favor 
are  never  wanting  to  man,  and  are  even  most  generous 
when  most  unseen, — and  how  it  is  folly  to  mourn  the 
fossils  of  a  defunct  vegetation,  when  the  hill-sides  and 
meadows  around  us  are  everywhere  breaking  into  new 
and  rosy  blooms. 


THACKERAY  AS  NOVELIST.* 

|N  laying  down  the. last  page  of  "The  New- 
comes,  "one  is  tempted  to  exclaim,  in  language 
similar  to  that  which  the  eminent  critic,  F. 
Bayham,  Esq.,  applied  to  his  good  friend  and  patron, 
the  Colonel  :  '"  Brave  old  Thackeray,  noble  old  soul  !" 
With  the  same  restrained  ardor  that  the  brave  Colonel 
himself  used  to  charge  at  the  head  of  his  Indian  dra 
goons  upon  the  Mahrattah  cavalry,  you  charge  upon 
the  selfishness  and  shams  of  our  hateful  little  societies. 
With  the  same  dauntless  courage  of  your  sturdy  country 
men  that  fills  the  ditches  and  heaps  the  ramparts  of  Sebas- 
topol,  you  lay  about  you  on  all  sides  the  dead  and 
wounded  Cossacks  of  the  'false  life  on  which  you  war. 
You  are  a  regiment,  at  least,  in  yourself, — now  pouring 
a  rattling  fire  of  grape  into  the  enemy — now  picking 
down  a  general  with  a  Minie  rifle — and  now  exploding 
grandly  like  a  line  of  bombs — while  ever  and  anon  is 
heard,  in  the  midst  of  the  more  general  roar,  the  deep 
boom  of  some  thirty-two  pounder,  doing  an  amazing 
deal  of  damage. 

But   brave  old  Colonel   Thackeray,  noble  old  soul, 
you  have  done  more  in  "The  Newcomes"  than  discharge 

*  The  Neivcomes.      Memoirs  of  a  Most  Respectable  Family.      Edited 
by    ARTHUR    PENDENNIS,    Esq.       New    York:    Harper    &    Brothers. 

1855- 

From  Putnam's  Monthly,  Sept.,  1855. 


Thackeray  as  Novelist.  327 

your  files  of  musketry  and  your  parks  of  artillery  upon 
the  murderous  social  Cossacks,  sweeping  them  down  by 
the  hundred.  You  have  turned  Miss  Nightingale,  too, 
and  visited  the  hospitals,  and  helped  the  sick,  and  as 
suaged  the  horrors  of  the  dying,  and  pointed  their  last 
hopes  to  the  blessed  consolations  of  Christian  goodness 
and  truth.  You  have  shown  that  you  have  a  great  big 
heart  (of  which  we  that  knew  you  did  not  need  to  be 
convinced),  though  some  said  that  you  had  none,  and 
that  you  were  only  a  hard  old  soldier,  sabering  people 
all  round,  without  human  pity  or  remorse.  Yes,  indeed, 
a  heart  as  big  as  that  of  the  Colonel  himself,  but  with 
a  head  a  great  deal  wiser  than  his  ;  large  and  generous 
sympathies,  tenderness,  a  kind  love  of  your  brother, 
and  yet  a  truthfulness  which  does  not  allow  you  to  say 
that  the  world  is  made  up  of  these  ;  and  a  deep,  noble, 
Christian  philosophy,  which  gives  you  comfort  in  the 
absence  of  these. " 

The  merits  of  Thackeray,  which  have  raised  him  to 
his  eminent  position,  are  now  almost  unanimously  al 
lowed.  They  have  been  so  often  dwelt  upon,  at  least, 
that  no  one  need  be  ignorant  of  what  they  are.  First  and 
foremost  is  his  wonderful  humor — a  quality  in  which  he 
is  not  inferior  to  Swift,  Fielding,  Dickens,  or  any  other 
among  the  illustrous  English  humorists — and  which,  in 
some  form  or  other,  steeps  and  saturates  every  page  of 
his  writings.  And  this  humor  is  as  various  as  it  is  deep 
and  fine — now  broadly  grotesque,  as  in  "  Yellowplush's 
Letters,"  and  some  of  the  contributions  to  "  Punch" — • 
and  now  as  gentle  and  delicate  as  the  nicest  touches  of 
Addison  or  Goldsmith.  Even  the  exquisite  irony  of 
Cervantes  scarcely  surpasses  that  of  many  a  passage  that 
might  be  taken  from  the  "Paris  Sketch  Book,"  the 
''Irish  Sketches,"  or  the  "Journey  from  Cornhill  to 
Cairo."  The  exuberant  fun,  the  rollicking  animal 


328  Thackeray  as  Novelist. 

spirit,  which  sometimes  carries  Dickens  away  into  cari 
cature,  is  not  found  in  Thackeray,  who  is  more  uniformly 
equable  in  his  vivacity,  and  is  never  mastered  by,  but 
always  masters  his  genius. 

Indeed,  the  calm  impassive  tone  which  he  preserves, 
as  if  he  were  only  a  spectator  of  what  he  describes, 
quite  disinterested  and  heedless,  might  be  mentioned 
as  the  second  among  those  admirable  traits  which  have 
gained  him  a  name.  His  scenes  never  seem  to  be  in 
vented.  They  come  to  pass.  The  author  lifts  the  cur 
tain  and  the  play  goes  on.  He  comments  and  ridicules, 
he  sneers  and  laughs  at  the  motley  throng,  but  he  does 
so  as  one  of  the  audience.  You  do  not  feel  that  he  is  re 
sponsible  for  the  result ;  the  actors  are  only  about  their 
own  work,  and  the  stones  tell  themselves.  Mr.  Tit- 
marsh  is  the  man  at  the  door,  who  takes  our  tickets 
and  points  out  the  best  seats.  Or,  rather,  he  is  the 
friend  who  asks  us  to  his  chamber,  to  take  a  peep  out 
of  his  window  at  the  busy  world  of  the  streets,  or  into 
the  neighboring  windows,  while  he  chats  pleasantly  at 
our  side  about  what  we  both  see.  Old  Pendennis,  and 
Costigan,  and  Farintosh,  and  Becky,  and  Bareacres, 
and  a  thousand  more,  are  the  people  who  are  passing, 
or  who  occupy  the  parlors  and  bedrooms  opposite. 
He  knows  them  all,  and  tells  us  who  they  are,  if  we 
are  ourselves  too  dull  to  guess  it  from  their  mere  ap 
pearance. 

It  is  this  remarkable  realism  which  gives  his  books 
their  aspect  as  an  actual  transcript  of  life.  Everybody, 
on  reading  them,  is  quite  convinced  that  the  author  has 
seen  what  he  sets  forth,  and  some  even  suppose  that  his 
own  agency  in  the  business  is  little  more  than  that  of 
the  camera  lucida  which  reflects  the  picture.  "He 
simply  puts  down  the  reports  of  his  eyes,"  exclaims 
Mr.  Keen,  "as  any  well-informed  gentleman  might 


Thackeray  as  Novelist.  329 

do."  But,  then  my  friend,  what  eyes  they  are!  how 
they  take  in  every  minute  particular  of  the  visible  ap 
pearance  ;  and  having  got  that,  have  strangely  pierced 
the  entire  significance  of  it  !  Almost  every  person, 
as  you  say,  is  in  the  habit  of  looking  at  the  world  and 
its  ways  with  his  eyes,  and  Thackeray  does  no  more  ; 
but  there  is  something  so  sharp,  so  penetrating,  so  lu 
minous  in  his  look,  that  when  he  sees  the  thing  he  sees 
the  whole  of  it — inside  as  well  as  out — and  that  not 
only  with  his  eyes,  but  with  his  brain  and  heart.  We 
know  of  no  writer,  save  Balzac,  whom  he  resembles  in 
other  points,  whose  characterizations  of  men  and  of 
incidents  are  so  sharply  defined,  so  nicely  and  finely 
cut,  so  chiselled,  as  if  from  the  block,  like  a  piece  of 
statuary,  and  yet  so  free  and  flowing,  and  full  of  anima 
tion,  the  most  unlike  statuary  of  anything  in  the  world. 
It  would  be  impossible  not  to  recognize  his  men  and 
women,  should  we  meet  them  again  in  the  streets.  In 
fact,  when  we  once  attended  an  opening  of  Parliament  in 
London,  we  saw  a  great  many  of  them,  and  were  about 
to  accost  them  on  the  score  of  old  acquaintance.  We 
heard  the  Captain  sing  an  Irish  song  in  a  cider-cellar 
in  the  Strand.  Mr.  Jeames  waited  upon  us  when  we 
dined  at  Blank  House,  and  we  were  introduced  person 
ally  to  a  dozen  well-known  fellows  at  the  club.  It  is 
needless  to  mention  their  names,  as,  we  are  sorry  to  say, 
they  were  generally  snobs. 

But,  besides  his  realism  and  insight,  Thackeray  owes 
much  of  his  success  to  his  style — which  we  hardly  know 
how  to  describe.  It  is  so  clear  and  simple,  that  it  seems 
at  first  to  possess  no  really  salient  qualities — to  be  a  kind 
of  unconscious  flow  of  the  author's  thoughts— and  yet 
the  impressions  produced  by  it  are  so  positive  and  pe 
culiar,  that  we  are  inclined  to  regard  it  as  a  result  of 
the  most  elaborate  art.  Yet  there  are  no  signs  of  effort 


330  Thackeray  as  Novelist. 

about  it,  no  marks  of  labor,  no  incompleteness  or  clum 
siness,  no  commonplaces  or  affectations  of  phrase,  and 
no  decided  polish  or  brilliancy,  but  only  an  easy,  off 
hand,  charming,  and  irresistible  grace,  which  you 
would  not  observe  if  you  did  not  set  about  it  purposely, 
in  order  to  analyze  your  pleasure.  Like  a  stream  which 
runs  through  a  rich  meadow,  it  rolls  on  quite  ignorant 
of  its  own  sweet  murmur  and  its  own  gentle  ripple. 
Addison's  style  suggests  it,  but  Addison's  was  more  ar 
tificial  ;  Goethe's  had  much  of  the  same  clearness,  but 
Goethe's  was  more  staid  and  stately ;  Fielding's  had  the 
same  naturalness,  but  was  at  times  too  careless  and  hur 
ried  ;  and,  in  fact,  we  can  only  speak  of  it  as  Thack 
eray's  own, — original,  vigorous,  natural,  limpid,  idiom 
atic,  and  flexible — a  perfect  vehicle  for  the  man's  pecu 
liar  spirit. 

All  this  is  admitted,  we  say — all  these  qualities  are 
pretty  unanimously  conceded  to  him — and  yet  Thack 
eray  can  hardly  be  called  a  popular  writer.  He  is  not 
popular  in  the  sense  that  Dickens  is.  He  is  not  loved 
nearly  so  much  as  he  is  admired.  He  has  not  taken 
hold  of  the  hearts  of  his  readers,  and  become  their  in 
timate  personal  friend.  We  do  not  refer  to  those  who 
Would  say  of  him  what  the  criminal  said  of  the  judge, 
and  on  the  same  grounds,  "  Take  that  man  away,  for  I 
go  in  fear  of  my  life  because  of  him  ;"  but  to  a  class, 
a  large  class,  who  view  him  with  distrust,  if  not  with 
positive  dislike,  even  in  the  midst  of  considerable  re 
spect.  They  allege  that  his  writings,  with  all  their  pleas 
ant  excellence  and  inventive  freshness,  with  all  their 
wit,  and  pathos,  and  sagacity,  and  wisdom,  and  variety 
of  character,  and  healthful  scrutiny,  are  offensive  from 
their  excessive  severity,  from  their  misanthropical  views 
of  life,  from  their  essential  injustice  in  dwelling  upon 
the  worse  aspects  of  human  nature  instead  of  the  better. 


Thackeray  as  Novelist.  331 

We  are  acquainted  with  several  gentlemen,  amply  qual 
ified,  by  endowment  and  culture,  to  undertake  the  task 
of  criticism,  who  express  a  total  inability  to  read  Thack 
eray.  They  get  weary,  they  tell  us,  of  representations 
of  society  wholly  made  up  of  snobs,  rascals,  demireps, 
flunkeys,  tuft-hunters,  fools,  coxcombs,  managing  mam 
mas,  flashy  daughters,  insolent  and  silly  nabobs,  and 
hoary  old  reprobates  in  general.  They  long  to  see 
among  the  figures  which  flit  through  his  phantasmago 
ria,  among  the  black  silhouettes  of  his  canvas,  some 
reminiscences  of  the  heroes  and  angels  who  exist  in  the 
real  world  as  well  as  in  the  old  books  of  romance. 
They  acquit  him  of  all  fondness  for  monsters,  for  high 
waymen  and  murderers,  and  the  various  nondescripts 
which  give  a  hobgoblin  and  hideous  look,  or  a  sulphur 
ous  smell  to  the  French,  Newgate,  and  Gas-light  litera 
tures  ;  but  they  aver  that  his  varnished  and  well-dressed 
but  thoroughly  rotten  sinners,  and  their  hollow  and 
hypocritical  satellites,  his  Steynes,  and  Crawleys,  and 
old  Majors,  his  Deuceaces  and  Crabs,  his  Becky  Sharps 
and  Lady  Kickleburys,  with  a  miscellaneous  rabble  of 
unmitigated  villains  behind,  are  not  a  whit  more  desir 
able  company.  Granting,  what  is  true,  that  he  throws 
in  a  good  old  Dobbin  at  times,  or  a  Laura,  or  an  Ame 
lia,  it  is  also  true  that  these  are  almost  as  weak  as  they 
are  good,  and  go  for  nothing  in  the  midst  of  the  over 
whelming  mass  of  scapegraces  and  scoundrels. 

Women,  especially,  have  been  shocked  by  the  repre 
sentations  which  Mr.  Thackeray  makes  of  their  world. 
They  protest  that  he  knows  nothing  at  all  about  the 
mysteries  of  their  delicate  and  beautiful  spirits — that 
they  are  not  all  husband  and  fortune  hunters,  or  brain 
less  and  fond  little  fools,  willingly  allowing  themselves 
to  be  imposed  upon  by  brutal  husbands  and  cruel 
brothers,  for  the  sake  of  occasional  shawls  and  trinkets, 


332  Thackeray  as  Novelist. 

or  a  kiss  now  and  then — but  that  they  have  souls,  and 
consciences,  too,  and  a  strength  of  love  and  goodness 
greater  than  man  has  ever  conceived.  They  do  not 
deny  that  there  might  be  a  Mrs.  Becky  in  existence,  or 
a  Lady  Griffin  even,  with  an  interminable  line  of  Mac- 
kenzies  and  Clutterbucks,  as  ambitious  as  they  are  vacu 
ous  ;  but  they  do  deny  that  the  entire  sex  feminine  is 
confined  to  two-  genera,  simply  represented  by  Becky, 
Blanche,  and  Beatrix  on  one  side,  and  by  Amelia,  Mrs. 
Pendennis,  and  Lady  Esmond  on  the  other.  We  re 
member  that  an  honored  contributor  to  our  own  Maga 
zine,  herself  distinguished  by  a  combination  of  the  gen 
tlest  virtues  of  the  woman  with  the  noblest  of  the  man, 
earnestly  repelled  this  narrow  view  of  one  half  the  race. 
She  complained,  that  while  there  were  women  who  had 
all  the  weakness,  without  a  particle  of  the  affection  of 
their  sex,  unrelenting  in  selfishness  and  unscrupulous  as 
fiends — that  while  there  were  women  insipid,  diluted, 
and  colorless,  mere  waxen  dolls,  simpering  prettily,  and 
dressing  prettily,  but  inwardly  all  bran — that  there  were 
also  a  vast  variety  of  other  women  of  a  nobler  and  higher 
make — the  Queen  Catharines,  and  Rosalinds,  and  Por 
tias  of  actual  life,  who  could  be  wise  as  well  as  good, 
strong  as  well  as  gentle,  generous  but  discerning,  self- 
sacrificing  but  not  through  weakness,  brilliant  but  amia 
ble  and  loveable,  or,  like  the  delicious  Madonnas  of 
Raphael,  at  once  heavenly  and  full  of  the  sweetest  hu 
man  love.  But  this  latter  sort,  she  said,  Mr.  Thackeray 
had  never  described. 

It  was  in  vain  to  urge,  in  defence  of  the  novelist, 
that  his  function  in  literature  was  not  to  invent  ideal 
worlds,  or  imagine  new, — that  he  was  not  a  Shakspeare, 
a  Goldsmith,  or  a  Scott,  but  simply  Mr.  Thackeray, 
whose  peculiar  intellectual  constitution  forced  him  to 
grasp  the  facts  of  things  as  they  were,  not  to  paint  them 


Thackeray  as  Novelist.  333 

as  they  ought  to  be  ;  and  that,  consequently,  if  his  can 
vas  abounded  in  disagreeable  forms,  it  was  because 
society  had  previously  much  more  abounded.  It  was 
vain  to  urge  that  he  dealt  with  English  social  life,  as  a 
false  system  had  rendered  it,  ridden  by  nightmares  of 
flunkeyism,  re-enacting,  under  fashionable  sanctions, 
the  infamous  practices  of  the  suttee  or  the  slave-planta 
tion,  and  consecrating,  by  the  sacredest  rituals,  an  inor 
dinate  consumption  of  toads  and  spittle.  It  was  in  vain 
to  urge  these  things,  because  the  dissentients  imme 
diately  replied,  with  an  air  of  triumphant  pity,  "  Heaven 
save  the  man  who  sees  nothing  in  our  human  life  but 
selfishness,  cowardice,  intrigue,  sycophancy,  pretension, 
bluster,  vulgarism,  and  the  intensest  mammon-wor 
ship  !"  Or,  "  Heaven  save  the  society  which  produces 
a  luxuriant  crop  of  these  as  its  perennial  staples  !  It  is 
not  such  a  man  we  want  to  know,  such  a  society  that 
we  care  to  contemplate.  It  is  not  in  such  circles,  or 
under  such  a  guide,  that  we  desire  to  make  the  tour  of 
England.  No  doubt  mean  and  vile  creatures  are  there 
in  abundance — no  doubt  Thackeray  exposes  them  in 
the  truest  light ;  but  we  believe  much  better  than  these 
exist,  who  would  be  more  delectable  companions  for 
us  and  our  children.  We  will  leave  a  P.  P.  C.  for  Mr. 
Thackeray,  then,  and  seek  a  purer  and  more  genial 
atmosphere." 

As  for  ourselves,  we  cannot  but  think  that  there  were 
some  grounds  for  these  complaints,  especially  in  the 
earlier  books  of  our  author,  while  the  justifications  of 
them  were  not  in  every  respect  adequate, — not  even  his 
own,  as  given  in  that  noble  closing  lecture  on  Charity 
and  Humor.  We  have  certainly  felt,  in  perusing  the 
"Shabby-Genteel  Story,"  the  "  Luck  of  Barry  Lyndon," 
"Men's  Wives,"  and  even  "Vanity  Fair"  and  "  Pen- 
dennis,"  that  the  weak  and  wicked  phases  of  human 


334  Thackeray  as  Novelist. 

development  were  brought  too  much  into  the  light, 
while  the  better  phases  were  kept  in  shadow ;  as  if  a 
man  should  take  the  bar-room  and  the  cock-pit  for  his 
school,  and  not  the  home  and  the  church.  But,  feel 
ing  this,  we  have  none  the  less  trusted  the  genius  of  the 
master.  We  saw  that  he  took  no  satyr's  delight  in 
offensive  scenes  and  graceless  characters  ;  that  he  was 
even  sadder  than  the  reader  could  be  at  the  horrible 
prospects  before  him  ; — that  his  task  was  one  conscien 
tiously  undertaken,  with  some  deep,  great,  generous 
purpose ;  and  that,  beneath  his  seeming  scoffs  and 
mockeries,  was  to  be  discerned  a  more  searching  wis 
dom  and  a  sweeter,  tenderer  pathos  than  we  found  in 
any  other  living  writer.  We  saw  that  he  chastised  in  no 
ill-natured  or  malicious  vein,  but  in  love  ;  that  he  cau 
terized  only  to  cure  ;  and  that,  if  he  wandered  through 
the  dreary  circles  of  Inferno,  it  was  because  the  spirit 
of  Beatrice,  the  spirit  of  immortal  Beauty,  beckoned 
him  to  the  more  glorious  Paradiso.  Even  his  deficien 
cies  in  the  portraiture  of  women  did  not  disturb  our 
faith,  because  we  knew  of  no  artist  who  evinced,  though 
tacitly  rather  than  by  words,  so  thorough  a  sympathy 
in  the  position  of  woman,  and  who  cherished  a  more 
pure,  ardent,  and  holy  reverence  for  her  true  nature. 
Many  a  time  did  he  make  our  heart  ache,  by  a  passing 
glance,  it  might  have  been,  at  the  wrongs  of  some  poor 
wife,  teaching  the  little  ones,  as  she  put  them  to  bed, 
to  pray  "  God  bless  papa/'  while  the  dissolute  husband 
was  squandering  his  all,  and  their  happiness,  at  the 
club  ;  and  we  had  yet  to  recall  a  single  word  of  his  cal 
culated  to  bring  a  really  womanly  woman  into  con 
tempt.  Traces  of  a  latent  enthusiasm  for  excellence, 
of  a  fervent  admiration  of  worth,  too,  broke  through  the 
crust  of  his  cynicism  and  satire  on  almost  every  page, 
as  the  golden  veins  of  California  crop  out  of  the  rough 


Thackeray  as  Novelist.  335 

masses  of  quartz  and  sand.  Besides,  however  much  we 
might  have  failed  in  discovering  the  extent  of  Thacke 
ray's  genius  ourselves,  we  remembered  that  the  author 
ess  of  "Jane  Eyre/'  than  whom  there  was  none  more 
capable  of  appreciating  originality  and  power,  had,  in 
dedicating  her  second  edition  to  him,  spoken  of  him  as 
"an  intellect  profounder  and  more  unique  than  his 
contemporaries  yet  recognized"  (for  he  was  then  com 
paratively  unknown),  as  "  the  first  social  regenerator  of 
the  day/'  and  as  the  "very  master  of  that  working  corps 
who  would  restore  to  rectitude  the  warped  system  of 
things."'  We  had  too  much  confidence  in  the  sympathy 
of  genius  for  genius  to  allow  any  more  superficial  judg 
ments  to  balk  our  hope. 

When  we  saw  Thackeray  in  person,  all  doubts  of 
him  were  dissipated.  When  we  saw  that  round;  good- 
natured,  yet  earnest  face,  when  we  heard  the  manly,  yet 
soft  and  loving  tones  of  his  voice,  when  we  marked  in 
his  estimate  of  illustrious  predecessors  his  intense  impa 
tience  of  the  morbid,  the  hollow,  and  the  malignant, 
and  his  kindly  affection  for  the  simple,  the  true,  and 
the  good,  even  though  erring, — when  we  found  how 
Swift,  and  Sterne,  and  Congreve  were  not  favorites,  and 
how  Dick  Steele,  Hood,  and  Goldy  were — and  how  his 
magnanimous  spirit  overflowed  into  delightful  recog 
nition  of  the  merits  of  his  compeer  and  rival,  Dickens  ; 
and,  above  all,  when  we  were  told,  in  private  life,  not 
only  of  an  honest  freedom  from  conventionalism,  which 
might  have  been  expected,  but  of  a  hearty,  genial,  and 
exuberant  candor  and  generosity — we  were  glad  that 
we  had  never  yielded  to  the  theory  of  his  morbidness 
and  misanthropy. 

Well,  ''The  Newcomes"  is  here  at  last  to  justify  our 
fondest  criticisms.  It  is  Thackeray  over  again  ;.  but  the 
old,  current  conception  of  Thackeray,  sublimated  into 


336  Thackeray  as  Novelist. 

what  his  particular  friends  had  always  believed  him  to 
be.  There  is  the  same  keen  sarcasm,  the  same  savage 
satire,  the  same  unrelenting  persecution  of  pretension, 
frippery,  cant,  and  falsehood — the  same  calm,  cold 
scrutiny  of  human  weakness  and  vice,  and  the  same 
stern  view  of  life ;  but  mingled  with  these,  in  fuller 
measure  than  ever  before,  are  gushes  of  tenderer  feel 
ing,  gleams  of  heavenlier  light,  a  deeper  pity,  and  a 
more  tearful  love.  Not  that  the  work  has  any  senti- 
mentalism  in  it,  for  of  that  the  author  is  incapable  :  it  is 
still  a  walk  in  the  immense  realm  of  Vanity  Fair,  which 
this  world  happens  to  be ;  but  the  characters  you  meet 
are  more  elevated,  and  the  scenes  more  touching.  It 
seems  as  if  the  air  of  that  region  had  grown  less  harsh  ; 
as  if  the  colors,  not  less  brilliant,  had  been  mellowed 
into  softer  tints ;  and  as  if  the  tones,  which  begin  in 
laughter  or  scorn,  die  away  into  the  thick,  earnest 
utterances  of  the  heart.  All  the  old  inhabitants  are 
there,  with  many  others,  with  the  indefatigable  sleuth- 
hound,  the  aristocratic  manager — never  before  so  well 
depicted  as  in  the  Countess  of  Kew — with  the  cold, 
self-seeking,  mean-spirited,  prosperous  merchant,  as 
Sir  Barnes  Newcome — with  the  vulgar  good  woman, 
Mrs.  Hobson,  who  thanks  God  that  she  and  hers  are 
not  like  yonder  publicans — with  the  brainless,  pampered 
fop,  like  Lord  Farintosh,  and  his  tail  of  toadies — with 
the  smiling,  gracious,  genteel,  artful,  thoroughly  selfish 
and  detestable  mother,  as  Mrs.  Mackenzie,  the  Cam 
paigner — with  the  poor  little,  harmless,  simpering  lady, 
Mrs.  Clive,  that  bloomed  for  a  day  under  the  hothouse 
nurture  of  her  bad  parent,  and  then  withered,  and 
pined,  and  perished  under  it  ;  all  the  old  passions,  and 
hypocrisies,  and  lies,  turning  the  fair  earth  into  a  fore 
court  of  Pandemonium,  are  there :  but,  contrasted 
with  these,  and  giving  a  deeper  hue  to  their  dread 


Thackeray  as  Novelist.  337 

folly  by  the  contrast,  are  noble  creatures,  like  the  good 
old  Colonel  and  his  son,  and  Laura,  and  the  lovely 
Ethel  ;  and  noble  lives  like  those  of  J.  J.,  the  artist, 
and  of  the  author  himself,  the  sincere,  hard-working, 
sympathizing  Arthur  Pendennis.  As  you  follow  your 
guide,  huge  cynic  as  you  may  deem  him,  through  the 
intricacies  of  his  Fable-land,  you  everywhere  feel  the 
warm  pressure  of  his  hand,  and  not  unfrequently  catch 
him  brushing  away  the  big  drops  from  his  eyes.  Sad 
he  is,  as  ever,  in  the  midst  of  his  raillery  ;  but  it  is  a 
sadness  of  the  kind  by  which  the  heart  is  made  better. 
If  it  cannot  be  said,  therefore,  that  Thackeray  displays, 
in  this  work,  either  a  deeper  tragic  or  a  broader  comic 
power  than  his  previous  works  have  indicated,  it  is  yet 
very  clear  that  he  has  used  his  power,  in  both  respects, 
with  a  more  uniform  gentleness,  and  under  the  inspira 
tion  of  a  more  open  humanity.  He  is  not  so  anxious 
to  conceal  his  own  tenderness  as  if  he  were  ashamed  of 
it,  nor  does  he  so  frequently  "  dash  his  brightest  pic 
tures  with  needless  dark."  In  the  characters  of  the  old 
Colonel,  and  of  Ethel,  he  has  drawn  us  better  speci 
mens  of  our  kind  than  any  he  has  yet  given  ;  not  be 
cause  they  are  more  ideal,  but  because,  with  all  their 
beauty  and  nobleness,  they  are  rigidly  true  to  our  every 
day  life.  Even  his  female  readers,  we  think,  will  for- 
giVe  his  past  offences,  for  the  sake  of  Ethel. 

But  we  have  not  yet  told  our  readers  the  story. 
Thousands  of  them  have  already,  no  doubt,  read  it  as 
it  has  appeared,  from  month  to  month.  [Here  fol 
lowed  an  outline  of  the  plot,  which  we  omit.]  As  a 
story,  it  is  not  superior  to  the  previous  inventions  of  the 
author,  serving  rather  as  the  mise  en  scene  for  his  char 
acters  than  as  the  means  of  a  deep-wrought  and  con 
sistent  development  of  dramatic  incident.  There  is 
little  that  is  ''thrilling''  in  it — nothing  that  makes  you 


338  Thackeray  as  Novelist. 

hold  your  breath  in  suspense — no  regular  unfolding  of 
event  after  event,  all  subtly  linked  together  till  the  end 
brings  in  some  heart-rending  catastrophe.  There  are 
no  passages  which  make  you  afraid  to  sit  alone  in  your 
study — lest  some  mysterious  door  in  the  wainscot  should 
suddenly  open,  or  the  lights  begin  to  burn  blue — or  to 
go  to  bed  without  a  candle.  It  is  simply  a  plain, 
straightforward  history  of  a  respectable  family,  some 
rich  and  some  poor,  some  good  and  some  bad,  now  in 
England,  and  now  on  the  continent,  but  who  all  con.- 
duct  themselves  very  much  like  certain  friends  of  our 
acquaintance. 

A  hundred  characters  are  introduced  into  the  story, 
and  a  thousand  incidents,  at  which  we  have  not  glanced 
in  this  hasty  abstract, — characters  and  incidents  such  as 
only  Thackeray  can  describe.  It  is  a  bald  outline  we 
have  given  without  them,  but  enough  to  enable  our 
readers  to  see,  as  we  have  before  said,  that  it  is  not  much 
of  a  story  in  itself;  some  parts  are  inartistically  managed, 
and  the  whole  is  greatly  protracted  ;  a  few  expedients, 
indeed,  such  as  the  killing  off  of  the  old  Countess,  to 
prevent  the  marriage  of  Ethel,  and  the  demise  of  Mrs. 
Clive,  to  set  Clive  free  again,  are  commonplace ;  but, 
in  general,  the  interest  is  well  maintained,  and  the  plot 
sufficiently  so  to  pique  curiosity.  All  the  young  ladies 
will  be  very  sorry  that  there  was  a  first  Mrs.  Clive,  and 
everybody  lament  the  senility  and  untimely  end  of  the 
Colonel,  worthy  to  live  in  hale  and  happy  vigor  a  thou 
sand  years.  We  do  not  ourselves,  however,  find  fault 
with  this  "taking  off"  of  the  dear  old  fellow.  It  has 
gathered  about  his  memory  something  of  the  tragic 
pathos  which  clings  to  the  white-haired,  tempest-beaten 

Lear. 

The  most  delightful  features  of  the  book,  besides 
those  already  mentioned,  are  the  glimpses  it  gives  us  of 


Thackeray  as  Novelist.  339 

the  serene  artist-life,  the  exquisite  fineness  of  its  drollery 
and  banter,  its  exhibitions  of  the  nobler  aspects  of  French 
character,  the  many  really  lovable  personages,  though 
quite  imperfect  ones,  it  makes  us  acquainted  with,  its 
masterly  fidelity  to  nature  throughout,  and  its  lofty, 
uncompromising  adherence  to  truth.  No  one  can  read 
it  without  deriving  from  it  a  great  benefit,  not  to  his 
mind  alone,  but  to  his  sympathies  and  conscience. 

Mr.  Thackeray  has  somewhere  called  the  humorous 
writers,  the  week-day  preachers  of  the  world,  and  ought 
himself  to  be  put  among  the  archbishops  of  the  class. 
JMo  one  of  them  has  preached  more  excellent  sermons 
in  a  lively  way,  or  to  a  larger  and  more  attentive  diocese, 
than  he.  Nor  is  it  a  commonplace  morality  that  he  has 
preached.  Was  it  not  he  that  "aroused  the  national 
mind,"  as  Punch  says,  "on  the  subject  of  snobs?" 
Has  he  not  tried  to  render  his  fellows,  as  he  was  him 
self,  sick  of  court  circulars ;  to  make  them  loathe  haul- 
ton  intelligence ;  to  believe  such  words  as  exclusive, 
fashionable,  aristocratic,  wicked,  unchristian  words  ;  to 
hold  a  court-system  which  sends  men  of  genius  to  the 
second  table,  a  snobbish  court-system  ;  and  to  stigma 
tize  a  polite  society  which  ignores  arts  and  letters,  as  a 
snobbish  society?  "  You,  who  despise  your  neighbor," 
he  reads  us  the  lesson  of  the  day,  "are  a  snob  ;  you, 
who  forget  your  own  friends,  meanly  to  follow  after 
those  of  a  higher  degree,  are  a  snob  ;  you,  who  are 
ashamed  of  your  poverty,  and  blush  for  your  honest 
calling,  are  a  snob,  as  are  you  who  boast  of  your  pedi 
gree  and  are  proud  of  your  wealth."  And  this  salutary 
lesson  has  been  followed  up  by  how  many  startling  and 
terrible  epistles  on  the  awful,  foolish  superstition  which 
has  translated  the  suttee  from  India  to  Europe — which 
sacrificed  wives  on  the  graves  of  their  husbands,  and 
broke  the  hearts  of  tender  maidens,  who  might  have 


340  Thackeray  as  Novelist. 

made  good  men  good  wives — in  an  insane  worship  of 
rank  and  fortune  ! 

But  the  gospel  of  this  preacher  has  gone  deeper  yet 
than  the  rebuke  of  social  vices — for  it  has  embraced 
the  profoundest  philosophy  of  life,  the  noblest  prin 
ciples  of  conduct.  The  greatest  good  he  asks,  is  it  to 
be  a  lord,  is  il  even  to  be  happy?  May  not  poverty, 
illness,  a  hump  back,  be  the  reward  and  conditions  of 
good,  as  well  as  that  prosperity — the  riches,  the  fame, 
the  honors — we  all  unconsciously  run  after  ?  In  other 
words,  is  not  the  great  lesson  of  our  human  existence, 
the  very  end  and  aim  of  it, — of  all  our  sufferings  and 
disappointments,  of  that  happiness  which  is  so  transi 
tory,  of  that  glory  which  is  so  unsatisfying — that  we 
may  be  taught  to  love  truth  and  goodness  for  their  own 
sakes,  as  their  own  best  reward,  as  sufficient  unto  them 
selves,  as  the  only  completeness  and  harmony  of  our 
being?  We  confess  that  such  seem  to  us  to  be  the 
principles  which  Thackeray's  books  illustrate,  and  that 
we  esteem  them  as  infinitely  loftier  and  truer  than  those 
other  moralities,  so  common  with  the  novelists,  which 
fill  the  mouth  of  the  virtuous  hero  with  luscious  plum- 
pudding,  and  enable  him  to  ride  in  a  gilded  coach, 
and  to  sniff  homages  from  his  admirers  at  every  turn. 
What  though  the  brave  and  good  are  so  often  wretched, 
and  the  selfish  so  often  prosper  ?  Is  there  not  a  glory 
and  a  solace  in  goodness  which  the  selfish  never  know, 
and  which  can  never  be  brought  into  comparison 
with  any  outward  splendor?  Wealth,  distinction, 
luxury,  power,  are  not  the  true  successes  of  life,  but  the 
simple  and  contented  manhood  and  womanhood  which 
God  honors. 


GOETHE.* 

|E  may  apply  to  Goethe  the  sentiment  of  his 
own  Shakspeare  und  Kein  Ende,  and  say,  he  is 
perennial.  The  interest  he  continues  to  excite 
among  the  critics  seems  to  have  no  limit  in  variety  or 
duration.  What  has  been  written  about  him  consti 
tutes  of  itself  no  small  body  of  literature.  Not  to 
mention  the  anecdotes,  conversations,  sketches,  lam 
poons,  and  eulogies  of  which  he  has  been  the  occasion, 
we  might  reckon  the  critical  essays  upon  his  works  by 
the  thousand.  All  that  he  ever  said  and  did  has  been 
put  in  print ;  his  physiology,  even,  has  furnished  a  theme 
to  Carus  and  Hufeland  :  while  his  smaller  poems  have 
originated  bushels  of  controversial  pamphlets,  and  his 
larger  ones  become  the  texts  of  elaborate  courses  of 
lectures  at  the  universities.  Only  Dante  has  caused 
more  dispute,  and  only  Shakspeare  been  so  volumi 
nously  bewritten. 

The  questions  which  exercise  the  critics  are,  whether 
Goethe  was  a  poet  at  all,  and  of  what  rank  ;  whether 
his  conceptions  of  art  were  the  lowest  or  the  loftiest ; 
and  whether,  personally,  he  was  a  god  or  a  demigod, 

*  The  Life  and  TVorh  of  Goethe  :  with  Sketches  of  his  Age  and 
Contemporaries,  from  published  and  unpublished  Sources.  By  G.  H, 
LEWES.  2,  vols.  Boston  :  Ticknor  &  Fields. 

From  Putnam's  Monthly,  Feb.,  1856. 


342  Goethe. 

or  merely  a  well-dressed  and  specious-looking  devil  ? 
Between  Menzel  and  Riemer,  between  Heine  and 
Carlyle,  we  may  find  all  sides  argued  with  infinite  talent 
and  an  inexhaustible  enthusiasm.  It  seems  to  be  as 
necessary,  in  the  critical  world,  to  have  a  theory  of  his 
existence  and  character,  as  it  is  to  have  a  theory  of 
Hamlet,  or  of  the  authorship  of  Junius.  Mr.  Lewes's 
book,  therefore,  is  only  one  more  contribution  cast 
upon  the  heap  which,  for  the  last  thirty  years,  has  been 
rising  like  a  pyramid  around  the  bones  of  the  great  king 
of  German  literature. 

We  have  already  expressed  our  opinion  of  the  work, 
in  a  way  which,  on  a  closer  perusal,  we  find  but  little 
occasion  to  qualify.  As  a  narrative,_  it  abounds  in 
interest :  much  of  it,  indeed,  is  an  acquisition  to  litera 
ture  ;  but  the  critical  parts  of  it  we  cannot  estimate  very 
highly.  Mr.  Lewes's  principles  of  art  are  so  superficial, 
being  founded  on  the  shallowest  of  all  philosophies, 
when  applied  to  the  deeper  problems  of  art,  that  his 
judgments  of  Goethe's  works  are  littie  worth.  The 
more  obvious  rhetorical  qualities  of  them  he  feels  and 
appreciates  ;  but  their  interior  significance,  their  real 
artistic  value,  he  often  misses.  Cherishing  a  kind  of 
phobia,  as  every  Positivist  must,  against  everything  that 
does  not  lie  on  the  surface  as  plain  as  the  nose  on  your 
face  ;  and  having  adopted,  at  the  outset,  that  stupid 
commonplace  of  some  of  the  Germans,  that  Goethe 
was  a  Realist,  while  Schiller  was  an  Idealist,  he  flurries 
and  flounders,  before  the  Wilhelm  Meister  and  the 
Faust,  like  a  frail  coasting  shallop  suddenly  driven  out 
to  sea.  He  persists,  too,  in  trying  to  measure  the  vast 
billowy  waters  with  the  line  and  lead  that  may  have 
served  him  so  well  among  his  native  creeks  and  inlets. 

As  the  result  of  all  that  has  been  said  of  Goethe,  the 
phrase  which  best  describes  him  is  this  :  the  Artist  of 


Goethe.  343 

his  Age.  Mr.  Carlyle  calls  him  the  Spokesman  of  his 
age,  and  Emerson,  varying  the  term,  the  Writer  ;  but 
it  is  clear  in  the  case  of  both,  that  they  use  the  words 
as  in  some  sort  synonymous  with  the  words  poet  or 
artist.  He  was  more  than  the  mere  secretary  or  recorder 
of  the  visa  el  cogitata  of  his  time.  He  was  the  man  who 
best  expressed  its  results — the  utterer  of  its  aspirations — 
the  lens  which  brought  its  varied  tendencies  to  a  focus. 
He  was  an  artist  in  that  his  endowments  were  peculiarly 
those  of  the  artist ;  because  his  whole  life  and  training 
were  artistic  ;  because  he  produced  some  of  the  best 
specimens  of  art,  in  its  worthiest  department — that  of 
poetry  ;  and  because  he  was  so  thoroughly  possessed  by 
.the  idea  of  art,  and  devoted  to  it  with  such  a  consistent 
and  absorbing  devotion.  His  entire  outward  and  inward 
life  was  one  great  picture  ;  the  soft  atmosphere  of  beauty 
was  the  element  he  breathed  :  while  he  saw,  in  the 
issues  of  art,  results  as  grand,  universal,  and  beneficent 
•as  those  which  the  philosopher  ascribes  to  his  science 
or  the  enthusiast  discovers  in  his  religion.  He  was  not, 
however,  like  our  Shakspeare,  the  artist  of  humanity 
and  all  time,  but  only  of  his  age.  His  mission  was  to 
interpret  to  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
riddle  of  its  being ;  to  gather  up  its  weltering  facts, 
sciences,  and  philosophies,  and  to  hang  them  on  its 
front  as  a  garland  of  flowers  ;  to  exhibit  the  poetry  of 
its  vast  prosaic  explorations  ;  to  detect  the  unitary  and 
the  universal  amid  its  infinite  details ;  and  to  mould  its 
distracted  activities  into  some  sort  of  organic  vitality. 
Whatever  his  deficiencies,  then,  they  were  the  deficien 
cies  of  his  era  ;  and  whatever  his  greatness,  it  was  the 
greatness  of  that  era  consummated  in  a  single  head,  or, 
rather,  precipitated  from  its  solutions  by  the  wonderful 
electricity  of  genius  into  a  few  single  and  brilliant 
results. 


344  Goethe. 

We  shall  the  better  perceive  the  force  of  these  truths  if. 
following  Mr.  Lewes,  we  first  run  over  briefly  the  lead 
ing  incidents  of  his  career,  and  the  more  prominent 
traits  of  his  writings. 

All    the  earlier  circumstances  of  Goethe's  life  seem 
to  have  been  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  development  of 
his  fine  natural  parts.      Frankfort,   his   birth-place,   so 
cosily  lying  among  the  gardens  and  green  fields  of  the 
silver-flowing   Maine,    though  a   provincial  town,   was 
hoary  with  ancient  associations,  and  yet  beginning  to 
bustle  with  modern  activity.     Its  fairs  and  coronations, 
its  quaint  old  customs  and  fantastic  parades,  its  cloisters 
and  trenches  and  queer  gabled   buildings,   contrasting 
with   the  stir   of  commerce  and  free-citizenship,   were 
things   likely  to  excite  a   youthful  imagination.     The 
little  Wolfgang,  with  an  organization  so   sensitive  that 
already,  in  his  ninth  week,  as  Bettina  amusingly  tells 
us,  he  had  troubled  dreams ;  who  could  be  convulsed 
by  a  look  at  the  moon,  and  was  savagely  intolerant  of 
any  kind  of  deformity  or  discord,  and  withal  insatiable 
in  his  thirst  for  nursery  tales  (of  which  the  good  mother 
fortunately  had  a  store),  was  early  and  richly  nourished 
by  the   gloom  and   the   glitter  of  his    native  city.      A 
genial,  brown-eyed,  handsome  child,  he  appears  to  have 
absorbed  all  influences  with  a  keen  relish,  and  yet  with 
calm  thoughtfulness.     For  the  most  part  he  saw  exist 
ence  on  the  sunnier  side,   in    country  rambles,   amid 
cheerful  friends,  rural  occupations,  home  sports,  studies 
of  art,  and  coronation  magnificences.      But  the  darker 
aspects  were  not  wanting  to  him,  as  \ve  see  in  what  he 
has  told  us  of  his  trembling  visits  to  the  Jews'  quarter, 
of   the   skulls    of    state   criminals   grinning   from    the 
highways,   of  the  judicial   burnings  of    books,   of  the 
seven  years'  war,  with  its  excitements  and  family  feuds, 
and  of  the  great  earthquake  at  Lisbon,   which  spread 


Goethe.  345 

consternation  over  the  world.  Mr.  Lewes,  in  his  ac 
count,  has  doubtless  omitted  many  of  these  details,  be 
cause  they  were  already  so  charmingly  narrated  in  the 
autobiography. 

It  was  a  good  thing  for  the  young  Goethe,  with  his 
sensibilities  and  impulses,  that  his  father  was  of  a  rigid 
didactic  turn,  with  a  hand  and  eye  for  art,  and  an  un 
yielding  zeal  for  discipline.  For  he  was  thereby  indoc 
trinated  into  science  and  history,  into  half  a  dozen  lan 
guages,  into  riding,  and  drawing,  and  dancing,  and 
other  graceful  accomplishments.  The  warm  affection 
and  active  fancy  of  one  parent  fed  his  heart  and  imagi 
nation,  while  the  stern  teachings  of  the  other  trained 
him  into  character  and  self-command.  On  the  one  side 
was  the  dear  and  noble  literature  of  the  nursery,  with  its 
ballads  and  snatches  of  old  song,  and  puppet-shows, 
opening  the  child's  paradise ;  and  on  the  other  was 
classic  lore,  severe  tutorships,  and  innumerable  accu 
racies  and  drillings,  with  now  and  then  an  appeal  to 
ambition.  At  the  same  time,  the  social  position  of  the 
family  drew  about  it  decided  men — men  of  strong  na 
tures  and  cultivation,  whose  houses  were  furnished  with 
books  and  pictures,  and  whose  talk  was  full  of  charac 
ter  and  thought.  All  this  aroused  the  intellect  of  the 
boy  ;  who,  in  executing  little  errands  among  artists  and 
tradesmen,  was  also  often  brought  in  contact  with 
the  humbler  classes,  where  he  saw  life  in  its  narrowness 
and  debasement.  It  was  in  one  of  these  excursions 
from  his  own  charmed  circle  into  the  nether  regions  of 
want  and  despair,  that  he  was  led  into  that  first  serious 
experience,  which  imparts  so  singular  a  pathos  to  his 
boyish  life — the  passion  for  Gretchen,  at  once  full  of 
simplicity,  fervor,  distress — a  passion  which  rose  upon 
him  like  a  fair  young  dream,  and  then,  after  a  few 
months  of  delicious  dalliance,  withdrew  into  the  night, 
15* 


346  Goethe. 

leaving  him  dark  and  lonely  and  inconsolable.  That 
experience  never  entirely  passed  away  ;  for  when  the 
impetuous  boy  had  grown  into  the  world-famous  man, 
the  vanished  Gretchen  reappears  as  the  sad,  sweet,  im 
perishable  Margaret  of  the  Faust. 

Goethe's  youth  was  a  continuation  of  the  same  favor 
able  influences,  controlled  by  a  strong  inward  force, 
which  had  surrounded  his  childhood.  His  student 
years  at  Leipsic,  Strasbourg,  etc.  (of  which  Mr.  Lewes 
gives  the  best  account  that  we  have  seen,  vastly  better 
than  Goethe's  own,  where  the  most  interesting  parts  are 
strangely  disguised),  cover  a  period  in  which  opinion  on 
all  subjects  was  undergoing  a  singular  ferment.  Full  of 
buoyancy,  of  hope,  of  uncouth  provincial  life,  yet  glow 
ing  with  the  consciousness  of  uncommon  strength,  "he 
had,"  as  Wieland  said  afterward,  "the  devil  in  him  at 
times,  and  could  fling  out  before  and  behind  like  a 
young  colt."  He  seemed  fitted  for  all  fortunes — for 
fun,  frolic,  adventure,  study,  logic,  and  eke  love  and 
religion.  Among  the  musty  professors,  and  the  wild, 
break-neck,  but  withal  intellectual  students,  he  was  at 
home  with  all — a  young  unacknowledged  giant,  secretly 
glorying  in  his  prowess,  now  and  then"  using  it  in  very 
grotesque  fashions — yet  docile,  pretensionless,  avid  of  all 
sorts  of  knowledge,  and  possessed  of  a  great,  free,  and 
laughing  heart. 

German  literature  was  very  much  in  the  same  in 
choate  condition  as  himself: — in  the  flush  of  a  mighty 
youth — striving  to  emancipate  itself  from  the  swaddling 
bands  of  timidity,  imitation,  and  awkwardness, — and 
dashing  forward  to  a  career  of  original  and  self-sustained 
power.  A  watery  deluge,  says  Goethe,  swelled  up  to 
the  very  top  of  the  Teutonic  Parnassus.  Yet  a  rainbow 
of  promise  began  to  form  itself  upon  the  clouds.  One 
by  one,  minds  of  considerable  magnitude  managed  to 


Goethe.  347 

emerge  from  the  prevailing  obscurity.  Gunther,  Gotts- 
ched,  Gellert,  Gessner,  each  in  his  line,  did  something 
to  bring  back  the  national  writing  from  the  stateliness  of 
Roman  decorum,  and  the  tinsel  of  French  glitter,  to 
German  nature  and  truth.  But  the  most  complete  revo 
lution  was  effected  by  three  men,  very  different  from 
each  other,  Klopstock,  Lessing,  and  Wieland,  of  whose 
efforts  Mr.  Lewes  gives  a  just  critical  view.  The  strug 
gle  was  long  and  difficult,  giving  rise  to  some  of  the 
fiercest  battles  of  words  that  were  ever  fought. 

Goethe,  with  constitutional  ardor,  threw  himself  into 
the  thickest  of  the  fight.  He  pierced  at  once  the  very 
heart  of  the  mystery  which  had  baffled  inferior  intel 
lects.  His  good  sense,  his  prodigious  attainments  in 
both  ancient  and  modern  learning,  but  more  than  all, 
the  unerring  instincts  of  the  born  poet,  enabled  him  to 
unravel  the  twists  of  the  critics,  and  expose  the  inner 
and  deeper  principles  of  art.  Early  taught  in  the 
school  of  the  noble  old  Hebrew  prophets  and  singers, 
and  more  recently  initiated  into  the  wizard  ring  of 
Shakspeare's  genius,  he  contemptuously  broke  through 
the  entanglements  of  a  formal  and  shallow  pedantry, 
and  soared  away  into  the  clearer  regions  of  poetic  truth. 
He  saw  the  barrenness,  the  constraint,  the  utter  futility 
of  the  prescriptive  principles  which  then  prevailed  ;  he 
saw  that  artists  were  laboring  over  the  stiff  and  hard 
shell  of  the  matter,  not  even  suspecting  the  existence  of 
a  kernel  ;  and  then — with  doubt  at  first,  with  mani 
fold  trial  and  sorrow,  and  perplexities  afterward — he 
labored  painfully  but  surely  into  a  conception  of  what 
the  modern  spirit  demanded  of  art. 

His  attention,  however,  was  not  exclusively  confined 
to  the  literary  and  artistic  strivings  of  his  contempora 
ries.  All  the  sciences,  and  nearly  all  learning,  along 
with  civil  society  itself,  partook  of  the  general  confusion, 


348  Goethe. 

while  his  nature  was  such  that  it  could  not  rest  till  it 
was  all  set  right  in  his  head.  Medicine,  philosophy, 
jurisprudence,  religion,  he  pursued  with  almost  as 
much  fidelity  as  art  -;  and  he  endeavored,  with  the 
same  native  and  decided  force,  to  master  and  mould 
their  elements  into  unity.  And  the  singular  triumph 
of  his  activity,  the  great  beauty  of  his  power,  was,  that 
these  tormenting  and  momentous  inquiries  were  carried 
on  in  the  midst  of  a  most  exuberant  and  joyous  out 
ward  life — curious  adventures,  such  as  are  known  only 
to  the  roistering  student-life  of  Germany  ;  frequent  and 
frolicsome  rambles  by  flood  and  field  ;  tavern-scenes ; 
visits  to  distant  famous  structures,  even  to  manufac 
tures  and  mines ;  and  love-commitments  that  stirred 
the  profoundest  depths  of  emotion.  A  constant  inter 
est  in  all  the  doings  of  courts  and  cottages,  alternated 
with  protracted  studies,  with  deep,  almost  agonizing 
questionings  of  the  riddles  of  the  world.  Thus,  what 
ever  the  matter  in  hand,  his  broad,  mercurial,  rich  na 
ture  was  found  to  get  at  the  bottom  of  it,  to  compre 
hend  it,  to  make  it  entirely  his  own.  No  half-way 
tasting  of  existence,  in  any  of  its  forms,  was  satisfactory 
to  him  ;  no  manifestation  of  the  great  soul  of  human 
ity,  be  it  a  rural  pastime  or  a  great  world-venerated  in 
tellectual  system,  was  uninteresting  to  him  ;  he  looked 
at  mankind,  in  all  their  likings  and  leavings,  with  open 
eye,  and  with  sunny,  open  heart.  In  Carlyle's  para 
phrase  of  his  own  distich  — 

"Life,  his  inheritance,  broad  and  fair; 
Earth  was  his  seed-field,  to  time  he  was  heir." 

With  such  a  nature,  and  such  a  development  of  it, 
having  met  and  overcome  most  of  the  trials  of  the  more 
impulsive  periods  of  life — a  naturally  strong,  noble  fig- 


Goethe.  349 

ure  of  a  man,  richly  adorned  and  embroidered  with  all 
the  graces  that  fortune,  family  education,  and  society 
can  superadd — Goethe  found  a  sphere  for  which  he  was 
peculiarly  prepared,  in  the  brilliant  court  of  Karl  Au 
gust.  The  young  Prince  of  Weimar,  attaining  his  ma 
jority  and  his  power  just  about  the  same  time,  was 
fortunately  one  who  had  a  heart  capable  of  love,  as  well 
as  a  head  fit  to  rule.  The  sudden  but  lasting  attach 
ment  which  sprang  up  between  himself  and  Goethe, 
was  as  honorable  to  both  as  it  appears  to  have  been  cor 
dial  and  dignified.  A  thoughtless  radicalism  has  im 
puted  it  to  Goethe,  that  this,  on  his  part,  was  a  devotion 
to  the  ruler,  rather  than  to  the  man  ;  but  the  fact  was, 
that  this  friendship  was  one  of  reciprocal  respect  and 
equal  favor,  where  any  social  advantages  conferred  by 
the  archduke  were  more  than  compensated  by  the  ce 
lebrity  conferred  by  the  poet.  The  life  of  neither  of 
these  illustrious  personages  was  made  up  of  court- 
parades  or  court-intrigue,  but  of  useful  labors  in  their 
several  spheres.  Karl  governed  his  little  province  with 
a  manly  sense  of  his  duty:  Goethe  immortalized  it  by 
the  best  works  of  the  best  modern  literature.  Indeed, 
it  was  a  rare  and  beautiful  sight,  this  intimacy  and  good 
will — cemented  in  earliest  youth,  and  carried  on  to  late 
old  age — between  one  worthily  born  of  a  race  of  kings, 
and  another  destined  to  become  greater  than  any  king. 
There  was  nothing  in  it  to  carp  at — there  was  much  in 
it  to  admire.  Goethe  it  placed  at  once  in  a  position 
where  his  majestic  and  graceful  intellect  could  freely 
unfold — in  a  circle  of  cultivated  friends,  possessed  of 
leisure  and  means  for  the  pursuit  of  art,  and  capable  of 
the  most  delicate  appreciation  of  his  own  lofty  endow 
ments.  An  organization  so  fine,  and  yet  so  magnifi 
cent,  found  its  genial  atmosphere  in  the  almost  ideal 
refinement  of  a  court.  The  simplicity  of  his  manners 


35o  Goethe. 

could  not  be  corrupted  by  it,  while  it  nourished  and  en 
riched  his  imagination.  True,  Jean  Paul  has  said  that 
"under  golden  mountains  many  a  spiritual  giant  lies 
buried  ;"  but  had  they  been  greater  giants,  they  might, 
as  Goethe  did,  have  melted  these  mountains  into  images 
of  beauty. 

His  court-life  was  valuable  to  him,  however,  riot  be 
cause  of  its  glitter  and  show,  but  because  it  simply  gave 
him  freedom.  Tis  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  genius 
always  thrives  best  in  loneliness  and  poverty.  Life  of 
every  sort  finds  its  most  sure  and  healthful  growth  in  a 
fitting  and  congenial  medium.  Burns  as  a  peasant 
was  no  greater  than  he  would  have  been  as  a  prince  : 
on  the  other  hand,  a  larger  nurture  would  have  aided  in 
a  larger  development.  Men  of  strong  native  force  will, 
no  doubt,  overcome  obstacles  of  formidable  compass  ; 
but  the  same  force  exerts  itself  all  the  more  effectively, 
where  such  obstacles  are  wanting,  or  of  less  oppressive 
magnitude.  In  the  one  case,  we  may  get  a  rugged, 
monstrous  upshoot — a  very  Polyphemus  of  savage  en 
ergy  ;  in  the  other,  we  are  likely  to  have  a  mightier,  self- 
poised,  majestic  Jupiter.  ' '  Gold  mountains  have  buried 
many  a  spiritual  giant ;"  yes,  but  there  have  been  many 
more  in  this  world,  buried  in  mud-holes  and  ditches. 

Goethe,  we  have  said,  valued  his  prosperous  condition 
for  its  freedom  :  it  gave  him  opportunities  for  a  rare 
and  expansive  culture  ;  it  gave  him  books ;  it  gave  him 
the  instruments  of  art ;  it  gave  him  access  to  all  modes 
of  life,  to  all  classes  of  society  ;  and  what  was  better 
than  all,  and  so  essential  to  his  being,  the  means  of  a 
free  communion  with  nature  by  observation  and  travel. 
That  impartial  judgment  of  men  and  things,  which  was 
one  of  the  kindly  traits  of  his  character ;  that  many- 
sided  interest  in  all  that  relates  to  the  intellectual  desti 
nies  of  humanity ;  his  unceasing  researches  into  the 


Goethe.  35 1 

realms  of  science,  and  his  miraculous  activity  in  those 
of  literature,  are  all  to  be  more  or  less  ascribed  to  the 
graceful  comfort  of  his  external  circumstances.  Had 
he  been  cramped  and  tortured  by  the  pressures  of  in 
digence — as  poor  dear  Richter  was — this  .impassive 
Goethe,  the  delight  of  women  and  the  admiration  of 
men,  might  have  become  a  rude,  double-fisted  icono 
clast,  battering  away  at  all  established  things,  with  the 
fierce  rage  and  revenge  of  a  demon.  It  would  have 
been  a  sight,  truly  that,  for  men  to  look  at  and  tremble  ! 
such  sights  being  necessary,  too,  at  times ;  but  we  are 
persuaded  that  Goethe  has  served  us  better  in  another 
way. 

Goethe's  life  at  court  was  not  in  any  hurtful  degree 
the  life  of  a  courtier.  It  was  a  life  of  universal  activity, 
and  of  broad  intercourse  with  men.  With  a  princely 
family  at  its  head,  whose  taste  diffused  a  love  of  art  and 
letters,  while  its  active  beneficence  cherished  the  best 
affections  of  the  people  ;  with  the  two  most  illustrious 
of  poets  to  give  tone  to  its  opinions  and  provide  its 
amusements  ;  with  the  excellent  Herder  and  kindred 
spirits  for  its  preachers  and  models  of  virtue ;  visited 
all  the  year  by  Richters,  and  Humboldts,  and  De 
Staels,  by  the  most  eminent  in  rank,  and  science,  and 
letters,  of  all  lands  ;  the  centre  of  thought  and  literary 
productiveness  to  cultivated  Germany — it  was  just  the 
sphere  for  his  peculiar  taste.  Yet  he  was  not  confined 
to  it.  He  often  sought  the  refreshment  of  more  rural 
scenes — now  wandering  away  into  the  sublimities  of 
Switzerland,  and  then  again  losing  himself  amid  the 
beauties  of  Italy.  Who,  indeed,  can  estimate  the  in 
fluences  upon  his  growth  of  these  journeyings?  The 
record  of  them  is  in  his  works — in  those  conceptions  of 
the  All-Fair,  which,  filling  his  soul,  overflowed  into 
speech.  What  must  Italy,  always  so  enrapturing  to 


352  Goethe. 

the  northern  imagination,  have  been  to  the  fancy  of 
Goethe  ?  A  land  of  wonder,  of  magic,  of  glory.  Its 
monuments  of  the  highest  that  man  has  achieved  in 
art — its  statues,  its  pictures,  its  architecture,  and  its 
music — its  theatres  of  the  grandest  that  man  has  achieved 
in  history — its  hills  and  vales,  its  waters  and  its  skies — so 
early  longed  after,  so  passionately  enjoyed,  as  the  lover 
longs  for  his  mistress,  and  dissolves  in  the  soft  ecstasy 
of  her  embrace — these  translate  him  into  another  and 
heavenly  world.  "This  day,"  said  he,  referring  to  his 
first  sight  of  the  paradise  of  art,  "  this  day  I  was  born 
anew." 

Thus,  in  endless  studies,  in  the  freest  interchanges 
of  friendship,  in  the  creation  of  immortal  forms,  in 
delicious  visits  to  the  most  delicious  climes,  the  years 
of  Goethe's  manhood  passed  away.  For  eighty  years 
he  "knew  no  rest  and  no  haste/'  like  a  star,  keeping 
on  its  " God-appointed  way;"  when  death  came  it 
met  him  busy  with  the  pen — the  implement  at  once  of 
his  pleasure  and  his  power;  and  he  sank,  as  a  child 
sinks  to  sleep,  with  the  glow  of  the  day's  activity  still  on 
his  cheek,  and  looking  forward  to  a  morrow  of  hope 
and  joy.  "Let  the  light  enter,"  were  his  last  words — 
answered,  we  trust,  from  a  region  where  all  is  light. 

Having  seen  the  life  of  the  man,  let  us  next  consider 
some  of  the  fruits  of  it  ;  and  what  strikes  us  first,  is 
their  variety,  in  itself  a  proof  of  power,  if  not  of  merit. 
He  wrote  elegies,  epigrams,  ballads,  songs,  odes, 
satires,  novels,  biographies,  translations,  essays,  trage 
dies,  and  books  of  science,  and  most  of  them  with  a 
peculiar  and  exquisite  skill.  His  poems  modulate 
through  all  the  keys.  His  prose  is  the  most  graceful 
and  transparent  in  German.  His  works  of  science, 
though  partly  superseded  by  more  recent  labors,  are  yet 
authorities  in  the  closet.  We  read  them  all  with  de- 


Goethe.  353 

light,  and,  while  reading  them,  think  the  one  imme 
diately  before  us  the  best.  It  is  only  on  mature  critical 
reflection  that  we  learn  to  discriminate  their  comparative 
values.  A  few  are  then  seen  to  be  inferior,  like  Stella 
and  his  comedies  generally ;  others,  again,  like  Clavigo, 
not  superior  to  average  productions  in  that  kind  ;  but 
the  greater  part  fix  themselves  in  the  memory  as  per 
manent  and  indestructible  forms. 

Assuming  the  Iliad  as  a  standard,  the  walk  of  art  in 
which  he  was  least  eminent  was  the  epic.  His  Achil- 
leis,  it  is  true,  seems  like  a  fragment  of  the  old  Grecian 
song,  but  only  a  fragment ;  it  has  none  of  the  breadth 
of  outline,  and  intensity,  and  weight  of  interest,  which 
give  so  much  grandeur  to  the  pages  of  Homer.  Could 
we  call  the  Hermann  and  Dorothea  an  epic,  instead  of 
an  idyl,  we  should  still  have  the  same  qualifications  to 
make  ;  for  while  it  is  perfect  in  its  way,  full  of  sweet 
pastoral  simplicity  and  artless  grace,  breathing  the  odor 
of  new-mown  hay,  and  cheerful  with  the  song  of  birds, 
its  interest  is  scarcely  more  than  individual  or  private. 
A  dark  burden  of  war  gathers  its  gloomy  folds  tran 
siently  over  the  lovely  scene  ;  but  it  soon  rolls  away  into 
the  distance,  leaving  the  landscape  as  gentle  as  ever, 
and  the  men  and  children  and  cattle  come  forth  to  re 
sume  their  labors  in  the  fields.  Nor  can  we  estimate 
the  dramatic  power  of  Goethe  as  highly  as  some  have 
done  ;  in  which  respect  we  agree  with  Mr.  Lewes.  His 
dramas  are  wonderful  poems ;  but  are  rather  dramatic 
in  their  external  form  than  in  inward  principle.  Con 
sidering  them  as  poems,  and  not  as  dramas,  they  mostly 
impress  us  by  their  richness  and  variety.  Their  very 
names  recall  to  the  reader  familiar  with  them  a  series  of 
beautiful  images.  There  is  old  Goetz  of  Berlichingen 
— the  burly  robber-hero — ''the  iron-fisted  self-helper" 
— with  his  robust  earnestness,  his  heroic,  tender  af- 


Goethe. 


fection,  his  violent,  deep-rooted  feudal  hatreds  —  perish 
ing  at  last,  like  the  era  of  which  he  was  a  type  —  in  a 
calm,  almost  voiceless,  despair.  There  is  Egmont, 
encircled  by  a  mild  splendor,  like  the  glory  which 
wreathed  the  head  of  his  own  Clarchen  in  the  vision, 
walking  through  the  distractions  of  a  tumultuous,  cor 
rupt  time,  as  the  moon  wades  among  the  gathering 
night-clouds.  Noble,  famous,  rich,  glowing  with  pur 
pose  and  hope,  yet  too  wise  or  too  weak  for  his  age,  he 
cannot  yield  and  cannot  conquer,  and  so  exhales,  from 
a  troubled,  weary  environment,  amid  sweet  dreams  of 
love  and  glory,  and  the  sound  of  muffled  drums.  There 
is  Tasso,  in  all  his  strength  and  weakness,  surrounded 
_by  the  splendors  of  a  court  and  the  applause  of  the 
world,  yet  pining  in  hopeless  love,  in  morbid  self- 
communings,  lofty  ideals  alternating  with  miserable 
jealousies,  and  the  tenderest,  noblest  of  minds  going 
out  in  darkness,  till  he  seems  like  some  grand  ruin  of 
his  own  Italy,  lifting  its  masses  of  foliage  into  the  crystal 
air  and  deep  blue  skies,  when  the  sun  retires  behind 
the  purple  mountains  and  leaves  it  alone  with  the 
shadows  and  the  stars.  And,  then,  there  is  the  Iphi- 
genia  —  that  stately  Grecian  maiden  translated  to  a 
Christian  clime  —  as  severe  in  her  beauty  as  the  creator 
of  Antigone  would  have  chiselled  her,  and  yet  as 
lovely,  and  tender,  and  sweet  as  our  modern  religion 
renders  the  soul  of  woman.  All  these  are  inimitable 
pictures  ;  but  our  space  warns  us  not  to  dwell  upon 
them  in  detail. 

The  most  original,  and  altogether  wonderful  of 
Goethe's  dramas,  is  the  Faust,  which  stands  alone  in  its 
kind,  as  the  Iliad  and  King  Lear  do  in  their  kinds. 
We  know  of  no  poem  in  any  language  to  the  writing  of 
which  there  was  requisite  a  more  various  and  exalted 
combination  of  faculties.  Other  poems  may  be  more 


Goethe.  36  5 

organically  perfect,  and  evince  in  the  authors  of  them 
a  larger  possession  of  certain  high  faculties,  but  none 
show  a  possession  of  so  many  of  the  highest  faculties. 
It  is  epic,  tragic,  and  lyric,  all  at  once — a  complete 
story,  and  a  development  of  character,  mingled  with 
gushes  of  song.  Almost  every  feeling  of  the  human 
breast  is  expressed  in  it  ;  the  grand,  the  pathetic,  the 
thoughtful,  the  capricious,  and  the  supernatural  alter 
nate,  as  in  a  dream  ;  grotesque  and  scornful  faces  peer 
on  us  from  its  mystic  pages  ;  visions  of  baffled  efforts, 
and  wasted  hopes,  and  broken  hearts  break  in  among 
choirs  of  angelic  voices  ;  men,  and  monsters,  and 
seraphs,  and  the  Supreme  God  even,  take  part  in  the 
ever-shifting  play. 

Wild  as  the  drama  is,  however,  tumultuous  and 
many -voiced  as  are  its  sounds,  from  the  harsh  discords 
of  devils'  laughs,  to  the  sweetest,  tenderest  human 
utterances,  it  is  singularly  true  in  its  delineations  of 
character.  The  personages,  of  the  first  part  more 
especially,  are  real  living  beings,  as  much  so  as  Mac 
beth  or  the  Moor.  Faust  himself,  with  his  far-reaching 
thoughts  and  insatiate  but  baffled  thirst  for  knowledge, 
is  as  near  to  the  mind  of  every  thinking  man  as  ever 
was  the  reflective,  unhappy  Hamlet.  His  early  yearn 
ings  for  truth,  his  weariness  at  the  stale,  flat,  and 
unprofitable  commonplaces  of  the  world,  his  fond  eager 
ness  to  love,  his  great  wrestlings  with  evil,  and  his  sub 
sequent  self-abandonment  and  woe,  reach  the  depths  of 
our  hearts,  and  seem  experiences  that  have  been,  or  may 
yet  be,  our  own.  We  feel  that  we,  too,  have  been  borne 
along  by  the  same  tempestuous  waves  of  life.  Has 
not  his  companion,  Mephisto,  been  our  companion 
also  ?  Do  we  not  recognize  him  as  a  well-known  indi 
vidual,  who  has  whispered  many  a  temptation  into  our 
ears,  or,  what  is  worse,  has  whispered  many  a  conso- 


3^6  Goethe. 

lation  ?  Ever  true  to  the  laws  of  his  being,  he  is  a  hid 
eous  disguised  consistency  throughout ;  and,  as  some 
one  has  said,  the  identical  devil  of  modern  times.  In 
equal  clearness,  but  strongly  contrasted  from  him  by 
her  innocence,  and  from  Faust  by  her  contented  sim 
plicity,  stands  the  gentle  Gretchen,  whose  story  unseals 
the  deepest  fountains  of  love  and  pity.  We  take  to  the 
artless  maiden,  as  a  true  product  of  nature,  from  the 
first ;  we  grow  happy  with  her  in  the  brief  spring  of 
affection  that  opens  upon  her  young  hopes  ;  our  heart 
breaks  with  hers,  in  her  cruel  betrayal  ;  and,  when 
she  departs,  during  that  horrid  night  in  the  dungeon, 
her  poor  distressed  brain,  like  Ophelia's,  quite  shat 
tered,  we  listen  to  her  expiring  words  as  to  a  voice 
from  the  spirit-land,  summoning  us  all  to  judgment 
on  her  account.  It  seems  as  if  the  whole  world  of 
man  were  condemned  by  the  sad  issue  of  such  a 
fate. 

The  prose  writings  of  Goethe  manifest  the  same  origi 
nal  and  masterly  genius  as  his  poems.  We  might  give 
in  evidence  of  this  his  Werther,  which  set  all  Europe 
agog,  and  his  Elective  Affinities,  which  extorted  from 
all  Christendom  a  howl  (while  all  Europe  and  all 
Christendom  devoured  both)  ;  but  we  shall  confine 
our  remarks  to  Wilhelm  Meister,  which  is,  doubtless, 
his  masterpiece.  As  a  narrative,  it  is  generally  pro 
nounced  destitute  of  interest ;  for,  like  the  needy  knife- 
grinder,  "  Story,  God  bless  you,  it  has  none  to  tell,  sir  ;" 
and  there  is  only  the  slightest  development  of  plot  in 
it — no  highly-wrought  or  intense  scenes,  no  grandilo 
quent  or  morbid  personages,  who  stamp  and  tear  about 
for  nothing,  and  only  events,  for  the  most  part  common 
place  and  unimportant,  following  each  other  in  a  lan 
guid  way  that  quite  persuades  the  admiring  reader  to  a 
gentle  sleep.  Compared  with  the  mobs  of  incident 


Goethe.  367 

that  dash  and  thunder  through  more  modern  tales,  it  is 
tame  even  to  an  extreme  of  dulness. 

Yet,  by  observing  a  little  while,  we  find  in  it  a  clear 
self-subsistent  world,  rilled  with  actual  men  and  women, 
whose  actions,  though  not  great  or  extraordinary,  are 
very  much  the  actions  of  humans.  They  are  characters 
of  real  life  ;  their  foibles  and  virtues  alike  drawn  with 
an  unsparing  hand,  and  presented  as  samples  of  this 
very  various  world  for  our  study,  and  not  as  heroes  for 
our  worship.  The  author  writes  as  though  he  had  no 
further  interest  in  them  than  he  would  have  in  the  same 
number  of  indifferent  individuals  anywhere  ;  he  merely 
raises  a  curtain  to  let  us  see  what  they  are  at,  and  all 
their  sayings  and  doings,  some  of  them  fantastic  enough, 
he  watches  with  imperturbable  gravity.  At  times,  we 
should  be  inclined  to  think  that  he  despises  the  whole 
pack  of  them,  if  he  did  not  go  on  parading  them  with 
the  utmost  calmness,  betraying  not  the  slightest  disap 
proval  or  vexation  at  anything  they  do,  and  shrinking 
from  no  untoward  discovery.  He  writes  their  biography 
with  the  most  scrupulous  fidelity — a  fidelity  which  has 
this  advantage  for  us,  that  we  get  gradually  a  deeper 
interest  in  their  proceedings.  We  come  to  watch  their 
movements,  to  listen  to  their  long  talks,  and  even  to 
suspect  that,  after  all,  they  may  possess  some  signifi 
cance.  The  suspicion  is  helped  out  by  certain  general 
remarks  we  happen  upon — quite  too  simple  and  obvious 
as  they  seem  at  first — but  which  cling  to  the  memory, 
and  transform  themselves,  in  some  way  or  other,  to 
profound  suggestions,  as  if  the  observation  and  insight 
of  a  long,  busy  life  were  suddenly  deposited  there. 
Then  we  are  aroused  at  intervals  by  single  passages 
of  a  splendid  and  majestic  eloquence  ;  criticisms  of 
art,  brief  but  rare  ;  penetrating,  comprehensive,  far- 
.reaching  glances  into  practical  life  and  the  philosophy 


358  Goethe. 

of  trade,  business,  and  human  nature,  accompanied  by 
a  most  provoking  tolerance  of  all  seeming  human 
weaknesses,  and  a  most  genial  sympathy  with  all  human 
strivings.  Sometimes  we  stumble  on  chance  allusions 
that  open  up  wondrous  depths  ;  obscure  hints  growing 
every  moment  more  palpable,  till  they  stand  forth  as 
luminous,  world-embracing  truths  ;  light  sparkles  of 
wit,  which  at  the  outset  merely  flash  upon  the  senses, 
but,  before  the  end  of  it,  condense  in  the  mind  into 
gems  of  wisdom  ;  manifest  traces  of  an  almost  uni 
versal  culture  in  the  author ;  little  outbreaks  of  song, 
that  make  the  whole  heart  ache,  we  know  not  why  :  to 
say  nothing  of  entire  pages  of  poetry,  in  the  shape, 
perhaps,  of  a  critique  on  Hamlet,  or  of  lofty  sentiments, 
and  noble  original  views  of  religion — all  flowing  in  a 
language  of  liquid  sweetness.  The  upshot  of  the  mat 
ter  is,  that  our  "dull-seeming,  slow-moving  Thespis 
cart"  changes  itself,  as  if  by  enchantment,  into  an  ideal 
realm  ;  the  theatrical  life  of  the  hero,  with  its  trivialities 
of  all  sorts,  its  high  aspirings  and  slender  realizings,  is 
seen  as  an  illuminated  picture  of  a  much  higher  life, 
where  every  incident  has  a  higher  end,  and  every  charac 
ter  embodies  higher  phases  in  human  development. 
The  vivacious  Philena,  the  clear-minded  Jarno,  the 
beneficent  Natalia,  the  manly  Lothario,  the  dignified 
Abbe,  the  cultivated  Uncle — the  mysterious,  melancholy 
Harper,  and  that  singular  child  of  enthusiasm  and  suf 
fering,  the  wild  boy-girl  Mignon — a  beam  from  heaven 
struggling  through  the  dank  vapors  of  earth — all  attach 
us  to  them  with  a  feeling  of  brotherhood,  as  elements 
of  that  manifold  rich  life  of  which  we,  too,  are  a  part — as 
notes  and  tones  in  that  universal  melody  which  nature 
is  ever  sending  up  to  her  God. 

If  Goethe,   who    is   everywhere   great,   is    anywhere 
greatest,  it  is  in  his  songs  and  ballads.      It  was  his  habit 


Goethe.  359 

through  life  to  turn  all  his  experiences  into  poetry,  that 
he  might  thereby  work  off  the  burden  of  his  emotions, 
whether  joyful  or  sad.  A  writer  in  the  British  Review 
lately,  in  a  generally  able  article,  describes  his  lyrics  as 
marked  by  "  deliberativeness,"  comparing  him  in  this 
respect  with  Wordsworth.  But,  to  us  they  seem  the  op 
posite  of  deliberative  ;  the  very  outpourings  of  his  mind 
in  all  its  moods  ;  a  melodious  diary  of  daily  and  almost 
hourly  changes  of  feeling  ;  simple  breathings  of  the  in 
ward  life;  sparkling  jets  of  momentary  thought  and 
affection.  We  find  a  perpetual  freshness  and  reality 
about  them,  like  the  bloom  of  new  spring-flowers. 
Speaking  of  the  present,  the  actual,  the  world  around 
and  in  us,  they  possess  a  hearty  human  interest.  Even 
when  their  meaning  is  insignificant,  they  ring  through 
us,  to  haunt  the  memory  and  imagination,  like  snatches 
of  Mozart's  music.  The  correspondence  of  the  form 
with  the  substance  is  so  perfect,  yet  simple,  that  the 
charm  defies  all  analysis.  It  is  felt,  but  not  detected. 
As  Carlyle  says  of  Burns's  songs,  they  sing  themselves  ; 
they  are  favorites  with  composers  as  they  are  with  the 
people ;  and  once  heard,  cling  to  the  brain  like  spells. 
Then,  again,  how  diversified  these  lyrics ! — some  as 
simple  as  the  whimperings  of  a  child  ;  others  grotesque, . 
na'ive,  or  full  of  a  devil-may-care  animal  spirit ;  others 
tender,  plaintive,  thoughtful  ;  others  wild  and  unearthly, 
and  others  again,  proud,  lofty,  defiant,  like  the  words 
of  a  Titan  heaping  his  scorn  upon  the  gods. 

John  Dwight,  one  of  our  finest  critics  of  art,  says 
of  these,  that  "they  are  as  remarkable  for  their  wild 
grandeur  of  thought  and  language  as  they  are  for  their 
irregular,  unrhymed,  dithyrambic  measure.  There  is 
something  in  their  Greek,  chorus-like,  mysterious  style 
and  movement,  which  cannot  be  lost  without  losing 
all  their  poetry.  They  breathe  the  old  Greek  atmos- 


360  Goethe. 

phere  of  ^schylus.  The  soul's  proud  assertion  of  it 
self  in  'Prometheus;5  the  child-like,  unquestioning  awe 
and  wonder,  and  even  admiration,  with  which  the  sub 
limity  of  destiny  is  celebrated  in  the  '  Limits  of  Man,' 
in  such  lofty  unalterable  language,  as  if  destiny  itself 
had  fitted  each  word  in  its  place  ;  the  delicious  unrest 
of  the  'Spring'  feeling,  the  yearning  to  be  taken  up  with 
which  nature's  beauty  overcomes  the  ravished  soul,  so 
sweetly  clothed  in  the  fable  of  '  Ganymede  ;'  the  simple 
majesty  of  the  '  Godlike  ;'  all  have  an  air  of  unpre 
meditated  inspired  beauty  and  grandeur,  which  defies 
imitation ;  and  they  lose  much  of  their  reality  and 
charm  in  any  other  language.  What  ballads,  in  any 
literature,  are  comparable  to  the  'Bride  of  Corinth,'  the 
'  Erl-King, '  and  the  '  God  and  the  Bayadere  ?'  "  We  are 
happy  to  have  our  taste  confirmed  by  such  an  authority. 
Without  dwelling,  however,  upon  the  mere  literary 
excellence  of  Goethe's  performances,  or  even  attempt 
ing  a  general  characterization  of  his  literary  genius,  let 
us  proceed  to  explain  why  he  is  called  so  emphatically 
the  artist  of  his  age.  It  is  the  more  important  because 
his  English  biographer,  true  to  the  behests  of  an  incom 
petent  philosophy,  seems  to  ignore  this  as  part  of  the 
matter  altogether,  and  stands  dumbfoundered  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  pervading  symbolism  of  Goethe's  writings. 
A  work  of  art,  like  a  product  of  nature,  is  to  him  a 
simple  fact,  having  relations  to  other  facts,  but  no  in 
ward  spiritual  meaning.  He  is,  therefore,  perpetually 
quarrelling  with  what  he  terms  the  mysticism  of  Goethe 
(although  he  had  already  pronounced  him  a  great 
realist),  and  is  pained  at  the  obvious  lapse  of  his  facul 
ties  in  the  latter  parts  of  Meister  and  Faust.  But  this 
"  mysticism"  is  as  much  a  part  of  Goethe's  being  as  his 
clearness  of  vision,  or  his  serene  wisdom,  and  demands 
as  much  the  nicest  study  of  the  critics. 


Goethe.  361 

The  explanation  of  it  is  simply  this  :  that  Goethe,  as 
a  man  of  genius  and  poet,  was  profoundly  penetrated 
and  possessed  by  all  the  vague  struggling  influences  and 
aspirations  of  his  time,  and  sought  to  give  them  melo 
dious  expression.  The  breath  of  the.  Divine  Provi 
dence,  which  animated  his  century,  only  animated  him 
the  more  interiorly  and  strongly,  and  the  task  of  his 
genius  was,  to  embody  its  suggestions  in  permanent 
forms.  He  lived  from  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  (1749)  to  near  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  (1832),  through  the  most  remarkable  period 
of  crisis  and  transition  that  the  world  ever  saw.  An 
old  era  was  coming  to  an  end,  amid  the  decay  and  de 
struction  of  many  things,  and  a  new  era  was  endeavor 
ing  to  get  formed.  There  was  agitation,  confusion, 
perplexity,  everywhere ;  "private  life,"  as  Varnhagen 
von  Ense  says,  in  an  Essay  in  which  he  arrives  at  the 
same  view  of  Goethe  that  we  have  formed,  "full  of  suf 
fering,  and  the  world  at  variance  with  itself;  old  forms, 
long  diseased  and  baneful,  unable  to  bind  the  fresh  life 
to  their  own  death,  and  new  unfolding  forms  yet  with 
out  a  sanction." 

Now,  these  were  the  elements  with  which  the  poetry 
of  that  epoch,  or  so  much  of  it  as  was  true  and  not  a 
reminiscence,  had  to  deal.  Accordingly,  we  find,  in 
the  series  of  Goethe's  works,  a  complete  bodying  forth 
of  the  successive  steps  of  progress  in  the  mighty  strug 
gle.  In  the  earliest,  the  Goetz,  we  take  a  look  back 
into  the  feudal  time,  and  see  it  perish  before  us,  in 
the  person  of  the  tenacious,  stalwart  hero,  with  a  cry  of 
woe  to  those  that  come  after  !  Wehe  der  Nachkommen- 
schaft!  Then  follows  the  Werther,  with  its  vapid  senti- 
mentalism,  and  passionate  winnings,  and  morbid  self- 
love  and  sorrow,  expressive  of  the  chronic  discontent  of 
society,  full  of  skepticism  and  black  despair,  and  which, 
16 


362  Goethe. 

unable  to  reconcile  itself  to  its  condition,  or  get  extri 
cated  therefrom,  goes  off  in  explosive  violence.  In  the 
Elective  Affinities,  says  Varnhagen,  whom  we  merely 
abridge,  is  a  recurrence  to  the  same  theme,  but  with 
greater  depth  of  passion  and  less  external  vehemence. 
Restlessness  has  subsided  into  impatience  or  suppressed 
hope.  The  soul  asserts  its  natural  freedom,  but  sub 
missively,  and  with  a  sad  consciousness  of  its  impotence 
in  the  presence  of  inevitable  circumstances.  Without 
revolting  openly  against  existing  forms,  it  postpones  its 
fruitions  to  another  world,  where  hearts  long  severed  may 
unite  again  in  the  bonds  of  a  free,  spiritual  attraction. 

In  Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship  the  view  of  life 
has  reached  a  higher  plane.  Doubt  and  distraction 
have  not  wholly  ceased,  but  the  prospect  of  a  free  and 
noble  natural  existence  is  not  shut  out  from  the  present 
earth.  Casting  aside  all  petty  personal  grievances,  the 
hero  submits  to  all  modes  of  living  and  doing,  in  the 
hope  of  working  off  every  disquietude  by  a  placid  and 
perpetual  activity.  By  the  very  exertion  of  his  powers, 
he  is  made  conscious  of  new  and  potent  charms  in 
life,  so  that  its  most  commonplace  details  are  set  to  a 
music,  not  wholly  divine,  and  yet  more  than  earthly. 
The  moodiness  and  madness  of  the  self-torturing  spirit, 
give  place  to  tranquil,  serious  endeavors  ;  the  clouds 
fall  away  ;  a  mild  effulgence  reveals  vistas  of  pleasant 
fields,  and,  though  we  reach  no  great  ethical  height,  no 
broad  Christian  views  of  things,  we  still  catch  glimpses 
of  the  infinitely  rich  and  varied  possibilities  of  life, 
under  a  noble  human  culture.  But  it  is  only  in  the 
Wanderings  that  the  inadequacy  of  the  previous  view  is 
filled  up,  and  work  becomes  worship,  and  the  discord 
ant  elements  of  society  are  reconciled  by  a  scheme  of 
co-operative  and  constructive  freedom.  What  an  antici 
pation  by  the  poet  of  St.  Simon  and  Fourier ! 


Goethe  363 

"In  the  Wander jahre,"  continues  Varnhagen,  "a 
comprehensive  view  of  a  new  order  is  drawn  in  firm, 
not  rigid  characters,  with  poetical  freedom.  The 
necessities  of  daily  life  take  their  rank  by  the  side  of 
the  highest  elevation  of  mind  ;  Christianity  works  in 
the  form  of  mild  piety  ;  education  spreads  out  her 
establishments,  powerful  and  all-comprehensive ;  the 
taste  for  art,  richly  bestowed  on  individuals,  becomes  a 
universal  advantage  ;  the  mechanical  arts  and  trades, 
led  by  wise  arrangements  from  their  destructive  rivalry, 
take  their  station  without  fear  beside  the  higher  arts, 
certain  of  receiving  from  them  due  honor  and  appreci 
ation  ;  natural  disposition  and  capacity  determine  and 
ennoble  every  occupation.  The  false  and  incongruous 
position  of  woman  disappears  before  rightly-assorted 
marriages,  which  bring  together  unequal  classes.  They 
are  exalted  into  free  ministers  of  a  religion  of  love  and 
beneficence.  A  new  estimate  of  things  and  of  actions, 
a  new  choice  and  distribution  of  the  lots  of  life,  a  new 
sense  of  the  good  and  the  beautiful,  are  disclosed,  by 
means  of  an  Association,  extending  over  the  whole 
earth,  full  of  liberal  activity,  of  respect  for  the  highest 
and  for  the  least ;  busied  in  extinguishing  crime  and 
want,  and  affording  the  rich  prospect  of  mankind 
advancing  in  culture  and  in  industry  ;  whose  maxim 
may  be,  in  worldly  things,  a  fair  share  in  the  possession 
and  enjoyment  of  the  stock  of  good  existing  for  every 
member  ;  in  what  relates  to  the  attractions  of  mind,  the 
liberation  of  the  prohibited  possible  from  all  fetters  that 
can  be  broken/'  It  is  evident  from  this,  that  if  Goethe 
had  given  us  a  third  part  of  the  Meister  (necessary  to 
the  completion  of  the  original  design),  we  should  have 
had,  in  Wilhelm's  Meislerjahre,  a  wonderful  fore 
shadowing  of  the  various  socialistic  experiments  of  this 
age.  But  the  time  was  not  then  ripe. 


364  Goethe. 

For  the  full  and  condensed  expression  of  his  mystical 
insight  we  must  turn  to  the  two  parts  of  Faust,  which, 
begun  in  the  author's  earliest  years,  and  completed  only 
near  his  death,  runs  parallel  in  its  development  with 
that  of  his  own  being.  It  is  the  grand  resume  and  con 
summation  of  his  thought  and  hope.  Abysmal,  wild, 
and  heterogeneous  as  it  seems,  there  is  yet  a  unity  per 
vading  it  which,  though  not  wholly  organic,  gives  to  it 
a  certain  consistency  and  life.  All  the  spiritual  worlds 
are  gathered  to  watch  its  issues  ;  all  humanity  is  in 
volved  in  them.  As  a  legend,  the  fable  had  its  origin 
in  the  middle  ages,  but  in  its  actual  working  out,  the 
century  of  Goethe  is  transfixed  on  every  page.  Faust 
comes  before  us  as  one  who  has  exhausted  science  in 
the  pursuit  of  individual  and  selfish  ends  ;  as  a  repre 
sentative  of  the  age  of  "victorious  analysis"  and  natural 
research.  Having  worn  away  the  golden  days  of  youth 
in  the  service  of  the  intellect,  his  manhood  is  weary  of 
the  result — is  saddened,  disappointed,  withered,  and 
would  fain  throw  away  its  barren  and  empty  life.  A 
nameless  unrest  surges  through  his  soul,  and  no  attain 
ment  in  knowledge,  no  conquest  of  nature,  is  able  to 
speak  the  word  of  peace  to  the  billows.  All  his  selfish- 
seeking  turns  to  vanity  in  the  fruition.  It  drives  him 
but  further  from  his  fellow-man  and  from  God.  A 
chill  isolation  and  solitude  is  the  recompense  of  his  toil. 
Musty  parchments  get  heaped  about  him,  and  skeletons 
and  grinning  skulls,  till,  in  the  agony  of  baffled  en 
deavor,  he  curses  life  and  all  its  fancied  joys,  and  even 
that  patience  which  endures  its  woes.  There  is  hence 
forth  for  him  only  contempt,  and  mockery,  and  denial. 
And  it  is  out  of  this  mood  that  Mephistophcles,  his  evil 
spirit,  his  other  and  lower  self,  the  incarnation  of  the 
intellect  and  the  senses,  is  born — Mephistopheles,  who 
hurries  him  along,  from  moral  indifference  to  sensual 


Goethe.  366 

indulgence,  from  debauchery  to  seduction,  and  from 
seduction  to  murder,  till  his  soul,  in  its  hideous  riot 
and  self-abandonment,  breeds  the  monstrous  crew  who 
celebrate  their  triumph  in  the  fearful  witch-dances  of 
the  Brocken.  This  principle  of  evil  works  itself  out 
still  further,  till  the  first  part  of  the  tragedy  closes 
in  a  scene  of  heart-rending  dislocation  and  eternal 
woe. 

In  the  second  part  we  are  shown  the  social  effects  of 
the  same  evil — an  incoherent  society,  which  is  but  one 
vast  masquerade,  where  the  spokesmen  are  fools  and  the 
only  recognized   nexus — money — a  stupendous  paper 
lie.      Faust,  as  the  representative  of  humanity,  plunges 
into  the  midst  of  the  mad  whirl,  strives  to  penetrate  the 
mystery  of   its  iniquity  and   errors,  but  in  vain.       He 
summons  the  antiquated  faiths,  and  finds  them  the  chil 
dren   of  chimera:    he  worships  the  spirit  of  ancient 
•  beauty  in  the  person  of  the  rejuvenated  Helen,  and  she 
disappears  as  suddenly  as  she  had  appeared,  leaving  him 
only  her  vesture  :  he  engages  in  war  and  commerce,  and 
everywhere  guilt,  and  care,  and  distress  dog  his  steps — • 
till  at  last,  old,  blinded,  hopeless,  rich,  and  miserable,  he 
deliberately  abandons  his  quest,  surrenders  his  purpose 
of  directing  his  own  way,  abjures  his  individual  ends, 
and  gives  himself  up  to  work.     "What  ho  !  ye  myriads 
of  humans,"  he  cries,  "relinquish  your  empty  search, 
and  go  dig  the  earth  !     Spread  yourselves,  in  free  crea 
tive  activity,  over  the  globe — lay  fire  to  the  snug  little 
private  dwellings  of  the  fond  old  couples — fill  in  the 
remorseless  marshes  and  pools — rescue  the  land  from 
the  devouring  ocean,   till  nature  is  brought  into  obe 
dience  to  man,  and  ye  all  shall  stand,  finally,  a  free  peo 
ple  upon  a  soil  as  free."     But  no  sooner  has  Faust  dis 
charged  himself  of  responsibility  for  himself,  no  sooner 
has  he  resolved   upon  a  life  of  spontaneous  creative 


366  Goethe. 

activity,  than  he  finds,  to  his  surprise,  that  the  goal  is 
won.  He  calls  upon  the  beautiful  day  to  linger,  be 
cause  his  earth  is  now  transformed  into  heaven.  The 
sin,  and  suffering,  and  sorrow  of  the  past  are  forgotten 
in  the  glories  of  a  better  consciousness  ;  legions  of 
angels  drop  roses  from  the  celestial  voids ;  even  the 
rocks  break  forth  into  song ;  and  all  who  had  ever 
sinned  and  suffered  reappear  (among  them  the  sweet, 
but  no  longer  heart-broken  maiden,  einsl  Grelchen 
genannt],  as  leaders  of  a  heavenly  throng  who  welcome 
the  spirit  of  Faust  to  the  regions  of  the  redeemed,  in  a 
mystic  sevenfold  chorus  of  hallelujahs  and  praise. 


RUSKIN'S    WRITINGS.* 

|R.  RUSKIN  stands  confessedly  at  the  head  of 
all  English  writers  on  Art  Despite  his  idio 
syncrasies,  which  are  often  glaring  enough, 
his  offensive  conceit,  and  a  want  of  philosophic  genius, 
remarkable  in  a  person  otherwise  so  well  endowed,  he 
deserves  his  position.  No  Englishman,  that  we  know, 
is  comparable  to  him,  either  for  the  extent  of  his 
knowledge  in  this  peculiar  range,  or  for  the  vividness 
and  value  of  his  critique.  Lord  Lindsay,  who  made 
the  history  of  art  a  specialty,  is  not  more  minutely 
acquainted  with  it  than  Ruskin  is  ;  nor  is  Mrs.  Jami 
son,  though  a  woman  more  susceptible  to  all  its  finer 
poetic  feelings ;  nor  is  Eastlake,  though  President  of 
the  Royal  Academy,  a  nicer  judge  of  its  technical  ex 
cellence.  In  fact,  we  might  roll  a  great  many  critical 
"  single  gentlemen  into  one,"  without  forming  a  com 
pound  equal  to  Ruskin. 

The  appearance  of  "  Modem  Painters,"  by  an  "  Ox 
ford  Graduate,"  protesting  so  vehemently  against  the 
shallow  pedantries  of  the  magazine  writers,  and  throw 
ing  down  the  gauntlet  of  critical  combat  to  the  entire 
circle  of  onlookers,  with  such  lusty  disdain,  was  an  era 

*Modern  Painters,  vol.  iii.      Of  Many  Things.      By  JOHN  RUSKIN. 
London  :   Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  1856. 
From  Putnam'' s  Monthly,  May,  1856. 


368  Ruskiris  Writings. 

in  the  history  of  British  criticism.       It  will  be  well- 
remembered  with  what  goggle-eyes  of  surprise  the  ac 
credited  authorities  watched  the  advent  of  this  young 
champion,  as  he  bounced  into  the  ring,  and  laying  his 
devoirs  at  the  feet  of  one  J.  M.  W.  Turner,  prepared 
for  a  general  joult.      First  unhorsing,   in   a   most  un- 
gallant  manner,  the  visored  knight  of  Blackwood,  and 
then  brandishing  his  lance,  pell-mell,   along  the  lists, 
he  seemed  to  fight  wildly  enough  :   but  it  soon  became 
clear  from  the  numbers  that  lay  dishonored  upon  the 
field — some  with  their  casques  broken  only,  but  others 
with    head    and    limb    disastrously   shattered — that   he 
fought   surely  as  well  as  wildly ;    those  sturdy  blows 
brought  down  a  foe  at  every  stroke.     Everybody  ad 
mired  the  dashing  intrepidity  and  the  confident  skill  of 
the   unknown   combatant.       What   commended    him, 
perhaps,   more  than  anything  else  to  popular   regard, 
more  than  his  acknowledged  ability,  his  brilliant  mas 
tery  of  natural  scenery,  and  his  evident  erudition,  was 
the  honest,   unblenching,   almost  truculent  zeal,   with 
which  he  took  up  the  cudgels  for  a  great  and  unappre 
ciated  modern,  in  whose  behalf  he  tore  away  the  false 
glory  that  had  hidden  the  defects  of  the  most  venerated 
painters  of  the  past,  tearing  some  of  their  flesh  with  it, 
and  thrashed   about  among  his  own   contemporaries, 
like  a  soldier  of  the  Commonwealth  among  the  be 
dizened  images  of  some  old  Jacobitic  chapel.     There  is 
scarcely  on  record  another  such  instance  of  the  fervent 
espousal  and  defence  of  one  man  by  another,  on  the 
ground  of  pure  intellectual  sympathy,  as  that  of  Turner 
by  Ruskin  ;  and  it  is  amusing  to  read,  now  that  Turner's 
fame  is  assured,  the  intense  vehemence  with  which  it 
was  supposed  necessary  to  assail  Claude  and  Poussin, 
in  order  to  enthrone  the  favorite.     Nor  does  it  appear, 
from  the  preface  to  this  latest  volume,  that  he  has  yet 


Ruskin  s  Writings.  369 

forgiven  the  slowness  of  his  countrymen  in  recognizing 
the  great  spirit  among  them  ;  with  ill-concealed  bitter 
ness  of  irony,  he  speaks  of  the  threefold  honor  heaped 
upon  Turner,  now  that  he  lies  quiet  at  Chelsea,  by 
those  who  "bury  his  body  in  St.  Paul's,  his  pictures  at 
Charing  Cross,  and  his  purposes  in  Chancery  !"  That 
is  the  ring  of  the  original  Ruskin. 

Mr.  Ruskin's  subsequent  writings  have  shown  that 
his  learning  was  equal  to  his  confidence.  Though  he 
has  never  been  able  to  rescue  his  judgment  from  the 
suspicions  which  his  early  impetuosity  and  continued 
want  of  temperance  have  created,  he  has  still  succeeded 
in  increasing  his  reputation  as  a  critic,  and  in  acquiring 
a  new  and  solider  hold  of  public  respect.  Not  a  few 
men,  now-a-days,  artists  as  well  as  amateurs,  allow  his 
thinking  to  color  all  their  own  :  there  are  some,  indeed, 
who  invest  him  with  a  species  of  infallibility,  who 
would  fain  believe,  that  when  he  has  pronounced  on 
any  point  of  artistic  morals  or  doctrine,  the  thing  is  for 
ever  determined  ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  note,  that  Mr. 
Ruskin  himself  rather  encourages  this  view  of  the  mat 
ter.  In  the  preface  to  the  volume  before  us,  he  gen 
erously  admits  that,  owing  to  the  immense  field  of 
study  to  be  gone  over,  in  order  to  qualify  one  to  be 
come  a  competent  critic  of  art — such  as  "optics, 
geometry,  geology,  botany,  and  anatomy,"  with  "the 
works  of  all  great  artists,  and  the  temper  and  history  of 
the  times  in  which  they  lived,'' not  forgetting  "meta 
physics,"  and  "the  phenomenon  of  natural  scenery" — 
there  is  some  "chance  of  occasionally  making  mis 
takes."  But,  apart  from  transient  slips,  he  is  quite 
impeccable.  The  laws  of  painting,  he  says,  are  as  un 
erring  and  obvious  as  those  of  music  or  of  chemistry, 
and  anybody  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  master  them, 
may  pronounce  opinions  upon  art,  as  unhesitatingly 
1 6* 


37°  Ruskiri s  Writings. 

as   Faraday  discourses  of  the  affinity  of  gases,   or  as 
Stephenson  of  the  capacity  of  locomotives. 

The  "Modern  Painters"  has  been  scattered,  in  a 
somewhat  desultory  way,  over  a  period  often  years,  and 
though  riot  begun,  and  never  intended,  we  imagine,  to 
be  a  regular  or  formal  treatise,  it  has  sufficient  unity  of 
purpose  in  it  to  justify  a  common  name  for  the  several 
volumes.  One  expects  a  great  deal  of  rambling  dis 
cussion  in  a  work  issued  so  by  piecemeal — issued  as  the 
external  exigencies  of  opinion,  rather  than  its  own  inter 
nal  law  seemed  to  require — not  a  little  inconsistently, 
perhaps — the  end  often  forgetting  the  beginning,  and 
the  beginning  often  setting  out  vigorously,  but  reaching 
nowhere — and  the  lesser  critics  have  an  ample  field  for 
the  display  of  their  malice  therein — yet  these  books  have 
a  method,  and  a  method  which,  with  no  great  research, 
one  is  able  to  dig  out  and  set  upon  its  feet.  As  the  au 
thor  states  his  plan  for  himself,  "his  general  object  has 
been  to  discuss  the  sources  of  those  pleasures  opened 
to  us  by  art"  (meaning  chiefly  pictorial  and  structural 
art) — pleasures  which  he  distributes  into  three  groups, 
consisting,  first,  of  the  pleasures  derived  from  ideas  of 
truth,  or  from  the  perception  of  resemblances  to  nature  ; 
second,  of  the  pleasures  derived  from  ideas  of  beauty  ; 
and,  lastly,  of  the  pleasures  furnished  by  the  meaning 
of  these  things,  or  ideas  of  relation. 

His  first  volume,  accordingly,  as  he  tells  us,  treated 
of  the  success  with  \vhich  different  artists  had  repre 
sented  the  facts  of  nature  ;  his  second  inquired  more 
abstractly  into  the  origin  of  our  ideas  of  beauty,  being 
an  attempt  toward  a  philosophy  of  the  theoretic  or 
imaginative  faculties  ;  while  the  third  volume  charac 
terizes  the  different  degrees  in  which  distinguished 
artists,  or  schools  of  artists,  have  succeeded  in  attaining 
true  greatness  in  art.  Another  volume  is  to  come,  but 


Ruskin  s  Writings.  371 

what  precisely  it  will  be  about,  we  cannot  anticipate; 
for  while  it  may  be  conceded  that  Mr.  Ruskin  is  some 
what  methodical,  it  is  no  less  clear  that  the  method  is 
one  entirely  of  his  own  make.  He  promises,  at  least, 
that  it  will  contain  a  formal  analysis  of  all  the  great 
labors  of  Turner. 

Mr.  Ruskin's  leading  question  in  this  third  volume 
is  what  constitutes  real  greatness  in  art.  Artists,  as  well 
as  critics,  have  always  recognized  a  certain  distinction 
between  high  and  low  art,  or  between  the  grand  ideal 
style  and  the  low  realistic  style,  but  they  have  never 
succeeded,  according  to  our  author,  in  describing  accu 
rately  what  that  distinction  is.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  in 
some  papers  contributed  to  Dr.  Johnson's  Idler,  in  1759, 
made  such  an  attempt,  but  without  decided  success. 
He  compares  high  art  to  poetry,  in  which  the  great, 
general,  and  invariable  ideas  of  human  nature  are  ex 
pressed,  without  regard,  and  even  in  contempt  of  nice 
details  ;  and  low  art  to  history,  which  makes  a  formal 
statement  of  every  particular  of  facts  or  events, — illus 
trating  the  former  by  the  Italian  schools,  excepting  that 
of  Venice,  and  the  latter  by  the  Dutch  schools,  inclu 
ding  that  of  Venice,  as  a  sort  of  Dutchified  Italian. 
But  Mr.  Ruskin  shows,  as  well  he  might,  that  these 
views  of  Sir  Joshua  are  exceedingly  superficial.  In  the 
first  place,  he  says  that  poetry  does  not  concern  itself 
with  minute  details,  and  the  faithful  imitation  of  nature 
is  not  an  easy  nor  an  undignified  thing.  Then,  passing 
to  his  own  better  views,  he  asserts  that  the  difference 
between  great  and  mean  art  lies,  not  in  definable  meth 
ods  of  handling,  or  styles  of  representation,  but  wholly 
in  the  nobleness  of  the  feeling  with  which  the  work  is 
prosecuted.  "We  cannot  say,"  he  remarks,  "that  a 
painter  is  great  because  he  paints  boldly,  or  paints  deli 
cately  ;  because  he  generalizes  or  particularizes ;  be- 


37 2  Ruskiri s  Writings. 

cause  he  loves  detail,  or  because  he  disdains  it.  He  is 
great,  if,  by  any  of  these  means,  he  has  laid  open  noble 
truths  or  aroused  noble  emotions.  It  does  not  mat 
ter  whether  he  paints  the  petal  of  a  rose  or  the  chasms 
of  a  precipice,  so  that  love  and  admiration  attend  him  as 
he  labors,  and  wait  upon  his  work.  It  does  not  mat 
ter  whether  he  toil  for  months  upon  a  few  inches  of  his 
canvas  or  cover  a  palace-front  with  color  in  a  day,  so 
only  that  it  be  with  a  solemn  purpose  he  has  filled  his 
heart  with  patience  or  urged  his  hand  to  haste.  And 
it  does  not  matter  whether  he  seek  for  his  subjects 
among  peasants  or  nobles,  among  the  heroic  or  the  sim 
ple,  in  courts  or  in  fields,  so  only  that  he  behold  all 
things  with  a  thirst  for  beauty,  and  a  hatred  of  mean 
ness  and  vice." 

All  which  is  very  well,  but  not  very  definite.  Now, 
what  we  want  is,  a  more  specific  description  of  the 
characters  which  make  up  greatness  of  style.  Mr.  Rus- 
kin,  when  he  gets  closer  into  his  topic,  states  them  to 
be,  in  the  order  of  their  increasing  importance,  ist,  the 
habitual  and  sincere  choice  of  noble  subjects  ;  2d.  the 
introduction  of  as  much  beauty  as  is  consistent  with 
truth  ;  3d,  the  largest  possible  quantity  of  truth  in  the 
greatest  possible  harmony  ;  and,  4th,  imaginative  power. 
By  " choice  of  noble  subjects,"  he  means  an  inward 
preference  for  subjects  of  thought  which  involve  wide 
interests  and  profound  passion,  as  opposed  to  narrow 
interest  and  slight  passions.  Leonardo,  for  example, 
in  the  selection  of  the  Last  Supper  for  painting,  evinced 
himself  a  greater  artist  than  Raphael  in  selecting  the 
School  of  Athens,  or  Teniers,  a  body  of  simple  clowns. 
Supposing  the  choice  sincere,  as  it  ought  always  to  be, 
it  marks  a  larger  and  nobler  range  of  sympathies  in  the 
heart,  and  a  disposition  to  dwell  in  the  highest  thoughts 
of  humanity.  Again:  by  the  "introduction  of  as 


Ruskin  s  Writings.  373 

much  beauty  as  is  consistent  with  truth,"  Mr.  Ruskin 
means  that  the  fairest  forms  must  always  be  sought  out 
and  dwelt  upon,  that  the  intensest  beauty  is  to  be  wor 
shipped,  but  not  exclusively,  or  to  the  denial  of  the  fact 
that  ugliness  and  decrepitude  also  exist.  For  beauty, 
deprived  of  the  proper  foil  furnished  it  by  its  opposites, 
ceases  to  be  enjoyed  as  beauty,  just  as  light  deprived  of 
shadow  ceases  to  be  enjoyed  as  light ;  while  the  ugliest 
objects  contain  some  element  of  beauty  peculiar  to 
themselves,  which  cannot  be  separated  from  their  ugli 
ness.  In  other  words,  the  perception  of  beauty,  like 
other  human  perceptions,  is  relative,  and  is  best  enjoyed 
in  the  relations  in  which  nature  has  discovered  it  to  us. 
Thus,  the  intense  spiritual  beauty  of  Angelico  is  fresh 
ened  and  strengthened  by  his  frank  portraiture  of  ordi 
nary  brother-monks  :  Shakspeare  places  Caliban  beside 
Miranda,  while  a  vulgar  mind  withdraws  his  beauty  to 
the  safety  of  the  saloon,  and  his  innocence  to  the  seclu 
sion  of  the  cloister.  High  art,  therefore,  neither  alters 
nor  improves  nature,  but  seeks  for  what  is  lovely  in  it, 
just  as  it  is,  and  displays  this  loveliness  to  the  utmost 
of  its  power.  What  further  Mr.  Ruskin  means  by 
"putting  as  much  harmonic  truth  as  possible"  in  a 
work,  and  by  "imaginative  power,"  we  need  not  stop 
to  explain,  as  he  has  already  dwelt  upon  these  points  in 
his  previous  works.  Stated  without  disguise,  or  rather, 
without  that  wonderful  richness  of  illustration  and  occa 
sional  eloquence  of  phrase  in  which  Mr.  Ruskin  some 
times  imbeds  his  thoughts,  his  idea  of  the  comparative 
greatness  of  styles  in  art  is,  simply,  of  the  degree  in 
which  they  combine  goodness  of  purpose  with  love  of 
beauty  and  truth,  and  imaginative  power. 

No  one  can  object  to  this  view,  which  is  not  particu 
larly  novel,  though  so  admirably  illustrated  ;  but  it 
might  have  been  more  simply,  and,  at  the  same  time, 


374  Ruskiri  s  Writings. 

philosophically  reached.  It  is  true  of  every  work  of 
art,  as  it  is  of  every  product  of  nature,  that  it  is  what 
the  strange  old  Swedenborg,  in  his  way  of  phrasing  it, 
calls  "a  thing  of  trine  dimensions."  He  means  by 
this,  that  things  are  things  only  as  they  are  at  once  an 
end,  a  means,  and  an  effect,  or  as  they  possess  a  soul, 
a  mind,  and  a  body.  Stript  of  either,  a  thing  is  a  most 
imperfect  thing,  or  rather,  no  thing  at  all,  as  any  one 
may  see  who  will  conceive  of  himself,  or  any  creature, 
if  he  can,  destitute  of  either  of  them,  though  it  should 
be  but  for  a  moment.  Every  work  of  art,  being  a 
most  precious  outgrowth  of  the  human  spirit,  must  also 
have  its  soul,  mind,  and  body.  The  first,  is  that  great 
purpose  which  gives  birth  to  it ;  the  second,  that  organic 
distribution  of  parts  which  makes  it  a  form — and  the 
last,  that  sensible  embodiment  which  is  called  the  exe 
cution.  Its  substance,  or  soul,  is  the  end  which  the 
artist  has  in  view ;  its  form,  his  mode  of  conceiving  it 
intellectually  ;  and  its  body,  the  actual  sensible  appear 
ance. 

We  say  the  soul  of  it  is  its  great  end  or  purpose,  by 
which  expression  more  is  meant  than  by  the  simple 
term,  ''choice  of  subject."  The  most  inveterate  numb 
skull,  or  the  most  abandoned  rake,  may  choose  the 
most  sacred  theme  for  artistic  treatment  ;  but  he  is  only 
so  much  the  more  the  numbskull  and  the  rake  for  ex 
posing  in  this  way  his  foolishness  or  his  hypocrisy.  His 
real  choice,  his  inward  preference,  is  the  internal  de 
light  which  animates  his  action,  and  not  the  ostensible 
subject  which  gives  name  to  it.  This  delight  or  love 
may  range  from  the  lowest  desire  of  gain  or  fame,  up, 
through  various  varieties  of  avidity  and  passion,  to  the 
most  disinterested  sympathy,  in  every  humane  and  noble 
temper.  A  Caravaggio  will  paint  you  an  Entombment 
of  Christ — a  subject  in  itself,  certainly,  full  of  tragic 


Ruskiris  Writings.  376 

pathos  and  spiritual  significance,  and  which  he  handles, 
in  many  ways,  in  a  masterly  manner,  with  carnations  as 
fine  as  Giorgione's,  and  a  touch  as  vigorous,  almost,  as 
Michael  Angelo's,  but  there  will  be  only  so  much  soul 
in  it  as  may  be  implied  in  Caravaggio's  desire  to  please 
the  reigning  taste,  joined  to  a  display  of  his  own  wild 
energy.  His  work,  in  spite  of  its  subject,  will  be  essen 
tially  a  specimen  of  low  art,  quite  as  much  so  as  a 
charcoal  sketch  of  the  burial  of  one  of  our  wandering 
Indians  by  his  tribe.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are 
Dutch  painters,  who  will  paint  you  a  festival  of  village- 
boors,  or  an  encounter  of  half-tipsy  dragoons,  in  them 
selves  vulgar  subjects  enough,  in  a  manner  to  raise  them 
to  the  highest  sphere  of  art.  Nearly  the  whole  of 
Dutch  art  is  called  low  art  ;  yet,  when  we  perceive,  as 
we  often  do,  that  the  delight  of  these  painters  lay,  not 
in  their  boors  and  dragoons,  but  in  the  national  life 
which  these  represented — in  that  sturdy  burgher  spirit 
which  had  laboriously  won  a  country  from  the  sea, 
which  had  heroically  resisted  the  aggressions  of  Spanish 
despotism,  and  which  rejoiced  in  the  free,  honest,  inde 
pendent  citizenship,  achieved  by  its  own  valor  of  spade 
and  sword — do  we  not  recognize  in  it  something  vastly 
superior  to  those  low,  superstitious  reverences  which 
often  prompted  the  Madonnas  and  Martyrdoms  of  Italy  ? 
We  say  it  is  this  soul  of  a  picture — this  inmost  pur 
pose — this  spiritual  sympathy,  which  not  only  inspires 
it,  but  determines  its  character,  and  assigns  it  its  rank 
in  the  different  walks  of  art.  Let  the  end  of  the  artist 
be  mean,  selfish,  grovelling,  and  though  his  subject  were 
the  Nativity  or  the  Crucifixion — the  highest  facts  of 
human  history — and  though  the  effects  were  wrought 
out  with  miraculous  cunning  of  brain  and  hand,  the 
work  cannot  be  elevated.  On  the  other  hand,  let  the 
end  be  great,  originating  in  any  large  and  disinterested 


376  Ruskiris  Writings. 

affection,  in  any  sincere  passion  of  love,  hope,  venera 
tion,  joy,  philanthropy,  and  the  spiritual  grandeur  alone 
will  redeem  it,  in  spite  of  much  poverty  of  invention 
and  much  feebleness  of  management.  On  this  account 
it  is,  that  the  genial  yet  serious  student  of  art,  wander 
ing  among  the  splendors  of  Italy,  will  often  be  arrested, 
in  the  midst  of  their  tropical  gleams,  by  some  infant 
bud,  some  early  flower,  peering,  it  may  be,  from  the 
broken  wall  of  a  now  abandoned  and  voiceless  cloister, 
in  whose  faded  touches  he  will,  with  joy  and  thankful 
ness,  still  descern  the  first  warm  kisses  of  God's  heav 
enly  sun.  Thus,  the  paintings  of  the  monk  Angelico 
do  not  ravish  us  with  a  glory  of  color,  as  Titian's  some 
times  do — they  do  not  overwhelm  us  with  exuberance 
of  incident,  as  Tintoretto  does — nor  charm  us  into 
speechless  admiration  by  graceful  form,  as  Raphael 
often  will  ;  but  the  devotion  of  them,  the  intense  spirit 
ual  sweetness,  calm  from  the  very  fervor  of  its  ecstasy, 
transfixes  us  with  awe  and  rapture. 

But  a  work  may  belong  to  a  great  department  of  art 
without  being  in  itself  a  successful  example  of  it — as  an 
animal  may  belong  to  an  exalted  species  without  being 
an  exalted  individual  manifestation  of  that  species — or, 
as  Overbeck's  paintings,  for  a  more  appropriate  instance, 
may  aim  nobly  at  the  highest  range  of  Christian  art, 
but  not  reach  it  perfectly.  For  to  this  there  is  required 
a  combination  of  excellences,  or  a  union  of  spiritual, 
intellectual,,  and  executive  gifts,  which  enables  the  artist, 
who  is  inspired  by  noble  sympathies,  to  work  them  out 
with  the  broadest  wisdom,  of  both  the  rational  and  im 
aginative  functions  of  the  intellect,  and  with  consum 
mate  manipulation,  or  mastery  of  material  elements. 
Consulting  any  acknowledged  masterpiece  of  the  world — 
whether  a  poem,  or  a  musical  composition,  or  a  paint 
ing — we  see  that  feeling,  thought,  and  skill,  are  blended 


Raskins  Writings.  377 

in  it,  so  that  while  it  touches  the  unsounded  depths  of 
the  heart,  and  stimulates  the  loftiest  energies  of  the  in 
tellect,  it  also  ravishes  the  eye  or  ear  with  delight.  The 
sum  of  the  qualities  necessary  to  the  greatest  art,  there 
fore,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  well  says,  is  simply  the  sum  of  all 
the  best  powers  of  man  : — "For,  as  the  choice  of  the 
high  subject  involves  all  the  conditions  of  right  moral 
choice,  as  the  love  of  beauty  involves  all  the  conditions 
of  right  admiration,  as  the  grasp  of  truth  involves  all 
strength  of  sense  and  evenness  of  judgment,  and  as  the 
poetical  power  involves  all  swiftness  of  invention  and 
accuracy  of  historical  memory,  the  sum  of  all  these 
powers  is  the  sum  of  the  human  soul." 

Enough  !  perhaps  the  reader  will  exclaim  with  Ras- 
selas — "you  have  convinced  me  that  no  man  can  be  a 
poet !"  Not  always  the  greatest,  but  still  great ;  for  the 
good  Providence,  which  has  scattered  along  the  line  of 
six  thousand  years  only  as  many  of  the  primal  stars  as 
you  may  count  on  your  fingers,  reserving  to  them  the 
peerless  dignity  of  perfection,  to  show  that  the  highest 
powers  are  not  absolutely  incommunicable,  has  yet  dis 
tributed  many  high  gifts  with  a  free  and  benignant 
hand.  To  some  God  has  given,  in  grander  measure, 
love,  and  to  some,  wisdom  ;  to  some,  power — to  some, 
the  heavenly  vision,  which  looks  with  eyes  undimmed 
upon  the  transfigured  glories — and  to  others,  the  swift 
sweeping  wings,  which  fan  away  the  dust  of  the  centu 
ries,  or  come  and  go  from  world  to  world,  like  flashing 
sunbeams — and  to  others,  again,  the  forging  hand, 
which  wrests  the  secrets  of  nature,  and  dissolves  its  rug- 
ged  rocks  into  gems  ;  but  to  all  of  us  he  has  also  given, 
if  we  but  use  his  gifts  with  humble  heart  and  diligent 
will,  the  power  to  appreciate  these,  to  repeat,  if  we 
please,  in  gentler  echoes,  the  thunders  of  their  voices — 
to  build  our  chalets  and  flower-gardens  on  the  sides  of 


Ruskin  s  Writings. 

their  Alps  ;  or,  what  is  better  still,  to  catch  with  our 
own  ears,  as  we  may  from  our  inland  homes,  some 
sound  of  distant  seas,  "rolling  evermore;"  and  to  be 
hold  with  our  eyes  some  downward  sparkle  of  the  inef 
fable  lustre  of  the  Suns. 

A  right  apprehension  of  true  greatness  in  art  in 
volves  an  inquiry  into  the  much-debated  question,  as  to 
the  true  ideal  of  art ;  Mr.  Ruskin,  accordingly,  expends 
a  great  deal  of  characteristic  energy  on  the  determina 
tion  of  the  point.  In  order  to  arrive  at  the  true  ideal 
of  art,  however,  he  conceives  it  necessary,  first,  to  pro 
pound  his  true  idea  of  life.  "The  proper  business  of 
men  in  this  world,"  he  says,  "is  first  to  know  themselves 
and  the  existing  state  of  the  things  they  have  to  do 
with ;  second,  to  be  happy  in  themselves  and  the  exist 
ing  state  of  things ;  and,  third,  to  mend  themselves  and 
the  existing  state  of  things,  as  far  as  either  is  marred  and 
mendable. "  If  anybody  is  not  disposed  to  this  busi 
ness,  it  is  because  he  fears  disagreeable  facts,  and 
shrinks  from  self-examination — acquiring,  gradually,  an 
instinctive  terror  of  truth  and  a  love  of  glossy  and  dec 
orative  lies  ;  or,  because  of  a  general  readiness  to  take 
delight  in  things  past,  future,  far-off,  or  somewhere  else, 
rather  than  in  things  now,  near,  and  here — thus  beget 
ting  a  satisfaction  in  mere  imagination,  or  in  things  as 
they  are  not.  Hence,  Mr.  Ruskin  infers  that  nearly  all 
artistic  striving  after  the  ideal  is  only  a  branch  of  this 
base  habit — "  the  abuse  of  the  imagination  in  allowing 
it  to  find  its  whole  delight  in  the  impossible  and  the 
untrue  ;  while  the  faithful  pursuit  of  the  ideal  is  an 
honest  use  of  the  imagination,  giving  full  power  and 
presence  to  the  possible  and  true." 

Now  the  uses  of  imagination  are,  first  and  noblest, 
to  enable  us  to  bring  sensibly  to  our  sight  the  things 
recorded  of  the  invisible  world ;  then,  secondarily,  to 


Ruskiris  Writings.  379 

traverse  the  scenes  of  actual  history,  making  them  real 
once  more  ;  then,  to  invest  the  main  incidents  of  life 
with  happy  associations,  in  order  to  lighten  present  ills 
and  summon  back  past  goods  ;  as,  also,  to  give  mental 
truth  some  visible  type  in  allegory,  simile,  or  personifi 
cation  ;  and,  finally,  when  the  mind  is  utterly  outwea- 
ried,  to  refresh  it  with  such  innocent  play  as  shall  be  in 
harmony  with  the  suggestive  voices  of  natural  things, 
permitting  it  to  possess  living  companionship  instead  of 
silent  beauty,  and  create  for  itself  fairies  in  the  green 
and  naiads  in  the  wave.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
abuses  of  the  imagination  consist  either  in  creating,  for 
mere  pleasure,  false  images,  when  we  ought  to  create 
true  ones,  or  in  turning  what  was  intended  for  the  mere 
refreshment  of  the  heart  into  its  daily  food,  and  chang 
ing  the  innocent  pastime  of  an  hour  into  the  guilty  oc 
cupation  of  a  life.*  As  examples  of  the  first  abuse, 
Mr.  Ruskin,  in  a  most  masterly  review  of  it,  cites  the  re 
ligious  art  (administering  a  rebuke  to  one  of  Raphael's 
customs  in  the  course  of  it),  which  asserted  the  most 
fulsome  and  outrageous  lies  of  the  simple  facts  of 
Scripture,  thereby  deadening  their  import  to  the  souls 
of  men  ;  while  of  the  second  abuse,  he  cites  the  profane 
art,  chiefly  after  the  sixteenth  century,  which,  seeking 
beauty  first,  and  truth  secondarily,  soon  lost  sight  of  all 
real  beauty,  as  well  as  all  real  truth,  and  sunk  into  a 
mesh  of  disgraceful  sensualism. 

Again  :  as  to  the  true  idealism,  it  has  taken  three 
principal  forms — the  purist,  the  naturalist,  and  the 
grotesque — all  permissible,  and  all  admirable  within 
their  limits,  but  the  best  of  them  the  naturalist.  "The 
things  about  us,"  our  author  says,  "contain  good  and 
evil  promiscuously,  and  some  men  choosing  the  good 

*  See  page  47,  the  sentences  of  which  we  merely  abridge. 


380  Ruskiris  Writings. 

alone,  they  are  called  purists  ;  and  some  taking  both 
together,  are  called  naturalist's  ;  while  others  have  a  ten 
dency  to  the  evil  alone,  and  hence  become  grotesque." 
The  purist  ideal,  exhibited  by  Angelico  and  many 
painters  of  the  thirteenth  century,  results  from  the 
unwillingness  of  men  of  holy  and  tender  dispositions 
to  grapple  with  the  definite  evils  of  life,  and  is  apt  to 
degenerate  into  a  weak  and  childish  form  of  art.  The 
grotesque  ideal  arises  from  a  healthful  but  irrational 
play  of  imagination  in  times  of  rest,  or  from  the  irregu 
lar  contemplation  of  terrible  things,  or  from  the  con 
fusion  of  the  imagination  by  the  presence  of  truths 
which  it  cannot  wholly  grasp,  but  it  must  be  held  with 
a  firm  hand  to  prevent  its  running  into  demonology  and 
wickedness  ;*  while  the  central  ideal,  the  ideal  of  ideals, 
as  we  may  say,  is  that  which,  accepting  both  good  and 
evil,  accepting  all  weaknesses,  faults,  and  wrongnesses, 
harmonizes  them  into  a  noble  whole,  in  which  the 
imperfections  of  the  parts  become  not  only  harmless, 
but  essential,  while  whatever  is  good  in  each  part  is 
completely  displayed.  This  has  been  the  ideal  of  all 
the  really  greatest  masters  of  the  world.  On  this  prin 
ciple,  Homer,  Dante,  Tintoret,  Shakspeare,  and  Turner 
worked.  And  under  the  influence  of  this  ideal  alone 
will  modern  art,  if  it  is  ever  destined  to  achieve  the  most 
glorious  triumph,  fulfil  its  mission. 

We  should  like  to  extract  largely  from  this  part  of  the 
book,  of  which  we  have  given  only  the  baldest  outline, 
to  evince  our  admiration  of  much  of  it  ;  and  we  should 
like  to  criticise  largely,  also,  to  tell  in  what  respects  we 
disagree  with  it ;  but  as  more  interesting  topics  are  at 

*  One  of  the  most  discriminating  of  criticisms  Ruskin  has  ever 
written,  occurs  in  this  chapter  on  the  grotesque,  where  he  compares  a 
griffin  of  the  classical  sort  with  a  mediaeval  griffin.  It  is  in  such  pas 
sages  that  he  displays  his  finest  critical  power. 


Ruskiris  Writings.  381 

hand,  we  have  only  space  to  utter  a  word  on  one  or  two 
points.  In  the  midst  of  that  medley  of  fine  things 
which  Mr.  Ruskin  says,  we  do  not  perceive  that  he 
strikes  the  key-note  to  a  proper  exhibition  of  the  ideal. 
His  distinctions  between  the  purist,  naturalist,  and 
grotesque  ideal  carry  a  certain  force  with  them,  and  are 
beautifully  elaborated  ;  but  they  are  not  philosophic 
distinctions,  because  they  are  not  founded  on  any  real 
relations  of  contrast.  They  are  simply  arbitrary  divi 
sions.  Purism,  as  he  interprets  it,  seeking  to  escape  the 
definite  evils  of  the  world,  is  a  weakness,  false  to  the 
essential  conditions  of  human  life,  and  consequently, 
as  he  seems  to  admit,  no  true  ideal.  His  grotesquism, 
again,  is  made  to  embrace  quite  too  much.  Our 
blessed  little  friends,  the  fairies  and  elves,  Titania  and 
Oberon,  and  even  the  spiteful  Kobolds,  spring  from  no 
affinity  for  evil,  and  are  romantic,  rather  than  grotesque 
creations  ;  while  the  art  which  arises  from  truths  that 
confuse  and  baffle  the  imagination,  is  simply  symbolic 
or  allegorical,  or,  if  more  than  that,  sublime.  Mr. 
Ruskin,  however,  is  unquestionably  right  in  regarding 
the  naturalistic  ideal  as  the  true  ideal;  ''naturalistic, 
because  studied  from  nature,  and  ideal,  because  men 
tally  arranged  in  a  certain  manner ;"  but,  unfortunately, 
the  very  point  we  want  to  know  most  about,  namely, 
what  this  "mentally  arranged  in  a  certain  manner" 
means,  he  covers  with  a  cloud  of  talk  on  "inspiration," 
"instinct,"  "  imaginative  vision,"  and  what  not,  as  misty 
as  any  German  philosophy*  that  we  have  lately  read. 

*  Besides  numerous  flings  in  the  text,  Mr.  Ruskin  devotes  an 
appendix  to  a  lusty  tilt  against  "  German  Philosophy,"  and  as  this 
includes  every  variety  of  human  speculation,  it  is  virtually  a  tilt 
against  all  philosophy.  It  is  amusingly  absurd  for  its  insular  bigotry,  but 
particularly  so  in  a  man  whose  book  (two-thirds  of  it)  is  occupied  in 
enforcing  a  philosophy  of  his  own.  In  behalf  of  this  decried  "  Ger- 


382  Ruskiris  Writings. 

This  taking  refuge  in  "inspiration,"  and  the  like, 
after  the  exceedingly  positive  statement  of  Mr.  Ruskin, 
that  the  laws  of  art  were  as  plain  as  the  affinities  of 
chemistry,  strikes  us  with  as  much  disappointment  as 
surprise.  After  being  led  on  through  a  hundred  pages 
by  an  expectation  that,  at  last,  a  great  light  was  to  be 
shed  upon  the  mysterious  realm  of  artistic  creation,  to 
find  it  only  a  will-o'-the-wisp,  rather  piques  one  into 
some  resentment  against  the  guide.  "The  great  man 
knows  nothing  about  rules,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin  ;  "the 
rules  of  art  cannot  be  taught. "  ' '  They  are  instinctively 
seen ;"  "they  are  God-given  ;"  all  which  may  be  true, 
and  is  ;  but  then,  how  is  it  that  the  laws  of  art  may  be 
''learned  by  labor,"  and  demonstrated,  as  Faraday 
demonstrates  gases?  We  cannot  but  believe,  if  Mr. 
Ruskin  had  studied  that  philosophy  of  which  he 


man  Philosophy,"  let  us  add,  much  as  we  dislike  some  of  its  merely 
metaphysical  wranglings,  that,  as  a  whole,  the  cultivated  mind  of 
Germany  approaches  all  questions  of  human  thought  from  a  vastly 
higher  stand-point  than  either  the  practical  English  or  the  scientific 
French.  Mr.  Ruskin  confesses  his  profound  obligations  to  Carlyle, 
yet  Carlyle  is  steeped  in  Germanism  to  the  core.  Besides,  what  an 
enormous  presumption  it  is,  to  arraign  the  philosophy  of  a  whole 
nation,  and  that  nation  the  most  cultivated  extant,  while  acknowledg 
ing  a  wilful  ignorance  of  it  !  What  seems  to  have  moved  his  special 
ire  against  "  German  Philosophy,"  is  a  phrase  of  Chevalier  Bunsen  in 
Hippolytus,  about  a  "  finite  realization  of  the  infinite,"  which  he 
ridicules  as  equivalent  to  a  "  black  realization  of  white."  We  do  not 
know  in  what  connection  Bunsen  applies  the  phrase,  but  we,  old- 
fashioned  Christians,  who  believe  literally  in  "  God  manifest  in  the 
flesh,"  /.  e.y  the  infinite  God  in  the  finite  Man,  can  conceive  a  meaning 
of  it  not  so  wholly  ludicrous  as  Mr.  Ruskin  supposes.  Again  :  he  is 
irate  over  the  phrase,  "  God,  man,  and  humanity,"  which,  he  says,  is 
a  parallel  to  "  Man,  dog,  and  canineness,"  but  no  more  so  than  the 
phrase  "  God,  man,  and  Mr.  Ruskin,"  which  is,  probably,  Bunsen's 
meaning. 


Ruskiris  Writings.  383 

cherishes  so  violent  a  rabies,  that  he  would  have  been 
enabled  to  write  more  clearly  and  consecutively  of  this 
"  mental  arrangement,"  which  is  the  essential  point  of 
his  whole  inquiry.  We  cannot  but  believe  that  Hegel, 
for  instance,  in  his  profound  analysis  of  the  develop 
ment  of  art,  through  its  several  forms  of  symbolic,  clas 
sic,  and  romantic  art,  in  spite  of  the  underlying  meta 
physics,  easily  separable  in  what  is  offensive  in  them 
from  the  genuine  substance  of  the  thought,  has  cast  a 
great  deal  of  light  upon  the  proper  sense  of  the  ideal. 
At  any  rate,  we  know  that  nearly  all  that  is  valuable  in 
Mr.  Ruskin's  own  speculations  was  anticipated  for  us  in 
that  writer,  with  much  that  Mr.  Ruskin  does  not  reach, — 
presented  with  a  comprehensiveness  of  view,  and  a 
freedom  from  petty  partialities,  which  it  would  materially 
assist  Mr.  Ruskin  to  cultivate.  We  do  not  mean  to  say, 
by  this,  that  we  accept  entirely  Hegel's  aesthetic  theories, 
which  have  the  defects  incident  to  his  general  scheme 
of  philosophy  ;  but  what  we  wish  to  commend  is,  their 
admirable  method,  the  profound  significance  of  certain 
parts,  and  that  elevation  and  breadth  of  view  which 
generalizes,  not  from  any  single  form,  or  age,  or  mani 
festation  of  art,  but  from  a  calm  survey  of  the  whole 
field  of  artistic  effort.  But  we  cannot  dwell  on  this 
point. 

The  most  labored,  novel,  and  altogether  characteristic 
part  of  this  work,  is  a  review  of  ancient,  mediaeval, 
and  modern  landscape — full  of  eloquent  writing  and 
keen  criticism — illustrated  by  effective  drawings,  but 
painfully  diffuse,  and  vitiated  by  superficial  learning  as 
well  as  superficial  philosophy.  It  must  be  confessed, 
in  the  outset,  however,  that  in  the  execution  of  the 
matter  Mr.  Ruskin  had  before  him  a  somewhat  embar 
rassing  problem, — embarrassing,  not  so  much  in  itself, 
as  in  his  position  toward  it.  He  had  already,  in 


384  Ruskins  Writings. 

numerous  works,  exhausted  the  vocabulary  of  his  con 
tempt  for  modern  art,  and  the  modern  mind  generally. 
It  was  base,  faithless,  mechanical,  and  altogether  given 
over  to  the  service  of  the  flesh  and  the  devil.  At  the 
same  time,  he  had  undertaken  the  championship  of  Mr. 
Turner,  as  the  greatest  landscape  painter  of  all  the  world. 
How  to  reconcile  the  two  positions  without  confessing 
either  the  inferiority  of  landscape,  as  a  form  of  art,  or  the 
insignificance  of  his  pet — "the  mighty  spirit,"  as  he  is 
called — in  glorifying  whom  he  had  spent  so  much 
labor,  was  the  perplexity.  If  he  admitted  the  greatness 
of  landscape  art,  he  admitted  the  greatness  of  the 
moderns,  inasmuch  as  they  are  incontestably  superior  to 
all  their  predecessors  in  this  respect ;  while,  if  he  denied 
the  greatness  of  landscape,  he  must  dismiss  his  favorite 
to  a  subaltern  place,  in  which  case  the  world  would  nat 
urally  inquire,  Why  all  this  fuss  about  nothing  and  no 
body  ? 

Mr.  Ruskin  hardly  extricates  himself  from  his  diffi 
culties,  but  plunges,  rather  as  if  he  was  not  aware  of 
them,  into  more  hopeless  confusion.  He  confesses, 
after  some  doubts,  that  landscape  is  "noble  and  useful," 
and  assigns  reasons  for  the  opinion  (which,  by  the  way, 
seems  to  us  quite  inadequate.)*  He  admits,  too,  the 
wonderful  devotion  of  the  moderns  to  the  study  and  rep 
resentation  of  his  favorite  "nature,"  which  trait,  in  it 
self,  he  regards  as  an  advance  upon  the  ancient  or 
mediaeval  status  ;  and  yet  he  tries  to  explain  it  away,  so 
far  as  he  can — partly  on  the  ground  that  our  seeming 
love  of  nature  is  "  pathetic  fallacy/'  arising  from  a  weak 
and  morbid  imputation  of  our  own  feelings  to  nature  ; 
and,  partly,  on  the  ground  that  we  have  so  emptied 

*  See  chapter  on  u  The  Use  of  Pictures,"  which  is  ingenious  but 
unsatisfactory. 


Ruskiris  Writings.  385 

nature  of  all  divinity,  as  to  approach  her  with  a  reckless 
irreverence  and  freedom — tearing  her  very  bowels  out 
with  our  prying  mechanical  sciences,  and  slavering  and 
daubing  the  very  face  of  her  august  countenance  with 
our  sentimental  poetry  and  paint. 

Let  us  state  the  whole  case.  The  historians,  especial 
ly  of  literature,  have  remarked  a  difference  in  the  modes 
with  which  nature  is  contemplated  by  the  ancient,  the 
mediaeval,  and  the  modern  mind.  Schiller,  in  one  of 
his  works,  expresses  a  surprise  that  the  Greeks — living 
in  a  genial  climate,  amid  the  most  picturesque  scenery, 
with  all  their  susceptibility  to  beauty — should  nowhere 
express,  in  their  poetic  writings,  a  sympathy  with  exter 
nal  nature.  They  often  give  faithful  descriptions  of  it  ; 
but  their  hearts  have  no  more  share  in  their  words,  than 
if  they  were  treating  of  a  garment,  or  a  suit  of  armor. 
Nature  has  no  charm  for  them,  to  which  they  cling  with 
plaintive  passion.  Gervinus,  in  his  History  of  Ger 
man  Literature,  indulges  in  a  similar  strain  of  thought 
in  regard  to  the  Minnesingers  and  popular  poets  of  the 
middle  ages.  They  evince  some  feeling  for  nature,  but 
have  left  no  independent  delineation  of  it — no  loving, 
tender,  self-surrendering  delight  in  it — nothing  more 
than  might  be  involved  in  it  as  an  accessory  to  their 
love-songs  or  their  chivalric  narratives.  How  different 
our  modern  poetic  compositions,  which  fairly  welter  in 
sunsets,  and  flower-beds,  and  dews,  and  streams,  and 
mossy  dells  !  Our  habitual  thought  even  is  crystallized 
into  the  forms  and  suffused  with  the  colors  of  the  physi 
cal  world. 

Mr.  Ruskin  adopting  these  hints,  undertakes  an  elab 
orate  analysis  of  the  differences  indicated.  Making 
Homer,  Dante,  and  Sir  Walter  Scott,  respectively, 
types  of  the  ancient,  mediaeval,  and  modern  ages,  he 
deduces  the  characteristic  feeling  of  each  for  landscape. 


386  Ruskiris  Writings. 

His  results,  stated  in  a  few  words,  are  these  :  (i)  With 
the  Greek  there  was  no  sympathy  with  nature,  as  such  ; 
only  a  straightforward  recognition  of  it  as  a  more  or 
less  agreeable  fact ;  no  sense  of  what  we  call  the  pic 
turesque  ;  an  interest,  mainly,  in  its  available  and  use 
ful  properties, — in  the  ploughed  field,  which  gave  him 
com — in  the  trellised  vine,  which  gave  him  wine — in 
the  nourishing  rains — and  in  the  meadows,  good  for 
feeding  oxen  and  sheep.  Mountains  he  rather  de 
tested,  as  he  did  all  weeds  and  wildnesses.  But  he 
cherished  a  keen  delight  in  human  beauty,  and  a  kind, 
familiar  reverence  for  the  deities  who  resided  within 
the  various  natural  elements.  (2)  With  the  medieevals 
there  was  a  more  sentimental  contemplation  of  nature — 
more  undisturbed  companionship  with  wild  nature — a 
love  of  the  sense  of  divine  presence  in  it — consequently 
a  fallacious  animation  of  it  by  demoniacal  agency — but 
a  continued  delight  in  human  beauty,  including  its 
dresses  and  decorations,  and  particularly  the  beauty  of 
woman.  Their  landscape  has  a  h'igh  sentiment  of  na 
ture  ;  but  is  often  feeble  and  inaccurate,  and  exhibits 
curious  traces  of  terror,  superstition,  piety,  and  rigid 
formalism.  (3)  With  the  moderns  we  find  an  intense 
sentimental  love  of  nature — particularly  of  clouds  and 
mists — indicative  of  their  fickleness  and  obscurity ;  a 
delight  in  mountains,  with  no  sense  of  their  solemnity  ; 
and  in  wild  scenery,  characteristic  of  an  unbridled 
fondness  for  liberty ;  interest  in  science,  but  no  sense 
of  human  beauty,  no  relish  for  costume,  an  utter  want 
of  faith  in  any  divine  presence  in  nature,  insensi 
bility  to  the  sacredness  of  color,  extreme  despondency 
of  mind,  and  an  eagerness  to  run  away  from  the  dreari 
ness  of  the  present,  taking  shelter  in  fictitious  romances 
of  the  past. 

"A  red  Indian,  or  Otaheitan  savage,"  says  Mr.  Rus- 


Ruskins  Writings.  387 

kin,  "has  more  sense  of  a  Divine  Existence  round  him, 
or  government  over  him,  than  the  plurality  of  refined 
Londoners  or  Parisians."  Again:  "  All,  nearly,  of  the 
powerful  men  of  this  age  are  unbelievers  ;  the  best  of 
them  in  doubt  and  misery — the  worst  in  reckless  de 
fiance  ;  the  plurality,  in  plodding  hesitation,  doing,  as 
well  as  they  can,  what  practical  work  lies  ready  to  their 
hands.  Most  of  our  scientific  men  are  in  the  last  class  ; 
our  popular  authors  set  themselves  definitely  against  all 
religious  form,  pleading  for  simple  truth  and  benevo 
lence  (Dickens  and  Thackeray),  or  give  themselves  up 
to  bitter  and  fruitless  statement  of  facts  (De  Balzac),  or 
surface-painting  (Scott),  or  careless  blasphemy,  sad  or 
smiling  (Byron,  Beranger).  Our  earnest  poets  and 
deepest  thinkers  are  doubtful  or  indignant  (Tennyson, 
Carlyle)  ;  one  or  two  anchored,  indeed,  but  anxious  or 
weeping  (Wordsworth,  Mrs.  Browning)  ;  and,  of  these 
two,  the  first  is  not  so  sure  of  his  anchor,  but  that,  now 
and  then,  it  drags  with  him,  even  to  make  him  cry 
out — 

" Great  God  !  I  had  rather  be 


A  pagan,  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn, 

So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lee, 

Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn." 

The  only  exceptions  to  this  universal  doubt  and  cyni 
cism,  according  to  Mr.  Ruskin,  are  Turner  and  the 
pre-Raphaelites  ! 

This  is  no  pleasant  picture  for  us,  but  luckily  is  sur 
charged.  Notable  differences,  no  doubt,  exist  between 
different  nations  in  respect  to  their  feeling  for  nature. 
Humboldt,  in  the  second  volume  of  the  Cosmos,  has 
discussed  the  whole  subject,  with  his  usual  discrimina 
tion,  and  conceives  that  those  differences  can  only  be 
accounted  for  as  the  complex  result  of  the  influences  of 


388  Raskins  Writing's. 

race — of  the  configuration  of  the  soil — of  climate — of 
government,  and  of  religious  faith.  He  concedes  the 
comparative  insensibility  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
but  then  he  claims  a  high  degree  of  true  feeling  for 
nature  for  the  Indian  races,  the  Persians,  the  Arabs, 
and  some  of  the  early  Christian  Fathers,  and  for  nearly 
all  the  moderns  since  the  time  of  Columbus,  including 
that  noble  mariner.  His  studies  are  more  varied,  and, 
we  think,  more  worthy  of  regard  than  those  of  Mr. 
Ruskin,  who  has  been  led  into  some  imperfect  views  by 
the  models  he  set  up  as  guides. 

Neither  Homer  nor  Sir  Walter  Scott  are  proper  types 
of  the  periods  they  are  chosen  to  represent,  though 
Dante  may  be.  They  were  only  epic,  or  narrative 
poets,  who  deal  with  nature  simply  as  the  accessory, 
or  background  of  their  pictures.  They  do  not  address 
her  at  first  hand.  Homer  was,  it  is  true,  a  "  Greek  of 
the  Greeks,"  but  he  chanced  to  live  some  five  hundred 
years  before  the  Greek  mind  attained  any  real  artistic 
development.  Had  Mr.  Ruskin  consulted  the  minor 
poets,  Simonides,  Bion  and  Moschus,  Meleager,  Pin 
dar,  and  Theocritus,  he  would  have  found  innumerable 
evidences  that  the  Greeks  cared  much  more  for  nature 
than  the  corn  and  wine  she  brought  them — had,  in 
deed,  a  sincere  admiration  of  her  beauty — and  fell  at 
times  even  into  "pathetic  fallacy."  Casting  our  eyes 
over  the  dramatists,  even  while  reading  Mr.  Ruskin's 
book,  they  fell  instantly  upon  several  bits  of  land 
scape-painting  as  fine  as  any  one  would  care  to  bless 
his  eyes  withal.  Nevertheless,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  main  interest  of  the  Greeks  lay  in  their  own 
humanity. 

Nor  is  Dante  precisely  the  poet  that,  on  first  thoughts, 
we  should  have  selected  for  the  illustration  of  mediaeval 
feeling  for  landscape.  He  was  the  master  of  his  age, 


Rusk  iris  Writings.  389 

and  his  poem  was  a  mirror  of  the  Italy  of  that  age, 
imaging  its  principal  personages  and  events  with  vivid 
reality.  But  he  was  also  a  poet  of  peculiar,  if  not 
exceptional,  temperament  ;  intensely  absorbed  in  politi 
cal  struggles  ;  distressed,  depressed,  wrapped  in  solitary 
gloom,  as  he  wandered  an  exile,  eating  the  bitter  bread 
of  others,  so  that  in  "his  burning,  troubled  soul,  arose 
great  thoughts  and  awful,  like  Farinati,  from  his  burn 
ing  sepulchre."  These  gave  tone,  we  suspect,  to  his 
daily,  as  well  as  his  immortal  visions.  But  Dante  shoots 
up,  so  Etna-like,  in  those  southern  skies,  that  one  feels 
he  must  have  carried  all  the  flowers  of  the  fields  on  his 
sides,  in  spite  of  the  hot  fires  at  his  heart.  Mr.  Ruskin's 
able  analysis  persuades  you  so  ;  and  yet,,  almost  coeval 
with  Dante  was  an  English  poet,  not  so  great  or  uni 
versal  by  any  means,  yet  a  very  great  poet,  whose  land 
scape  breathes  of  quite  another  air.  We  refer  to 
Chaucer — the  kindly,  honest,  old,  laughing  Chaucer, 
whose  sportive  fancy,  whose  grand  imagination,  whose 
subtle  humor  and  homely  wit  and  wisdom,  found  no 
equal  till  Shakspeare,  and  whose  pages  come  to  us, 
through  five  hundred  years,  still  smelling  of  the  fresh, 
wholesome  soil — still  dewy  as  the  morning,  lovely  and 
sweet  with  flowers,  and  vocal  with  the  songs  of  birds 
and  the  melody  of  streams.  If  Dante,  then,  expresses 
the  deeper  religious  and  political  life  of  his  times — if 
his  be  a  spirit  framed  in  more  heroic  mould — we  must 
claim  high  rank  for  our  Chaucer,  in  all  that  relates  to 
the  actual  life  of  the  people,  and  the  popular  sense  of 
nature ;  for  it  is  remarkable  of  Chaucer,  that,  chivalric 
as  he  is,  full  of  epic  pageantry  and  pomp,  living,  as  he 
did,  in  the  midst  of  a  brilliantly  romantic  and  elegant 
court — a  court  thronged  with  gallant  knights,  who,  at 
Cressy  and  Poictiers,  had  made  Edward  invincible,  and 
stately  dames,  only  less  beautiful  than  Philippa,  whom 


39°  Ruskiri s  Writings. 

the  statuaries  made  their  model  for  the  Virgin — still, 
his  pages  glitter  with  none  of  their  magnificence,  his 
song  exults  in  none  of  their  victories.  He  steals  away 
rather  to  the  people  at  their  firesides  or  their  sports,  or 
wanders  in  "the  blissful  sunshine,"  among  the  dews 
"more  sweete  than  any  baume,"  listening  to  the 
"birde's  song." 

" a  ravishing  sweetnesse, 


That  God,  that  Maker  is  of  all,  and  Lorde, 
He  heard  never  better,  as  I  guesse." 

A  more  cheery,  gentle,  enthusiastic  lover  of  nature  than 
he,  more  utterly  devoid  of  superstitious  glooms  and 
fears,  we  find  alone  in  modern  times. 

Against  the  inauguration  of  Scott  as  the  type  of  this 
age,  we  decidedly  protest.  He  was  scarcely  of  this  age 
at  all,  but  an  after-birth  of  former  ages,  sent  to  retrieve 
the  neglect  into  which  they  had  fallen.  Scott  performed 
an  acceptable  service  for  poetry,  in  sending  forth 
a  gallant  band  of  rugged  knights  and  outlaws  to  put 
the  stiff  old  Greeks  and  Romans  to  death,  and  then 
properly  withdrew.  A  tory  of  tories,  who  valued  the 
smile  of  his  prince  almost  as  much  as  he  did  the  fame 
of  Waverley  ;  who  tasked  his  magnificent  powers  in 
order  to  rear  a  baronial  pile,  that  toppled  down  upon 
his  own  head ;  there  was  yet  scarcely  a  movement  in 
modern  art,  science,  or  religion,  with  which  he  sympa 
thized.  His  poems  and  most  of  his  romances  have 
already  no  more  than  an  antiquarian  value.  They  are 
excellent  tapestries  of  times  fast  receding — agreeable  to 
look  at,  instructive,  picturesque,  with  a  fine  feeling  for 
the  chivalric  virtues,  but  rimy  with  the  dust  of  time. 
Strange  to  say,  that  all  the  while  Mr.  Ruskin  is  engaged 
in  this  preposterous  labor  of  setting  Scott  upon  a  pedes 
tal  where  he  cannot  stand,  there  hovers  around  him 


Ruskiri s  Writings.  391 

another  spirit — the  spirit  of  one  of  his  hated  Germans, 
a  poet,  a  man  of  science,  a  consummate  literary  artist, 
loaded  with  the  learning  of  all  the  schools,  yet  buoyant 
as  a  child  amid  his  new-found  blisses  of  nature — who 
wrote  a  drama  equal  to  Shakspeare's- — whose  songs  are 
in  the  mouths  of  the  people — and  whose  books  reflect 
all  the  grandeurs  and  glooms,  all  the  strengths  and 
weaknesses,  all  the  hopes  and  despairs,  of  the  last  half- 
century  !  Need  we  name  Goethe,  whom  Mr.  Ruskin 
unceremoniously  dismisses  for  his  "jealousy,  which  is 
never  the  characteristic  of  a  really  great  man?"  \Credall) 
We  do  not  believe  that  any  single  man  can  fully  repre 
sent  this  multitudinous,  manifold  age  of  ours  ;  but  if 
any  man  could,  it  would  be  Goethe.  It  is  to  him, 
more  than  any  one  else,  that  Mr.  Ruskin  should  have 
gone  for  the  modern  idea  of  nature  ;  and  had  he  done 
so,  he  never  would  have  given  us  that  libellous  carica 
ture  of  the  tendencies  of  the  modern  mind. 

Reading  the  "signs  of  times,"  we  are  sure,  is  not 
Mr.  Ruskin's  forte.  His  skill  in  pictures  may  be  great, 
but  his  skill  in  men  and  the  movements  of  society  is  not 
great.  This  very  question  of  the  change  that  has  taken 
place  in  men's  modes  of  regarding  nature,  has  a  pro 
found  significance  he  has  not  reached.  It  is  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  the  question,  as  to  the  difference  be 
tween  Christianity  and  the  pagan  religions.  Has 
Christianity  introduced  any  fundamental  transformation 
in  the  human  mind  ?  If  it  has,  the  mind  must  stand 
in  a  totally  different  relation  to  nature  from  what  it  did. 
The  common  belief  is,  that  it  has  introduced  a  marvel 
lous  change — a  change  not  merely  of  degree,  but  of 
kind  ;  and  that  our  modern  activity  is  the  outgrowth, 
though  feeble  as  yet,  of  that  change.  It  were  too  large 
a  theme  for  us  here  to  enter  into  an  exposition  of  the 
nature  and  value  of  that  change ;  but  we  may  suggest 


39 2  Ruskiris  Writings. 

two  things :  first,  that  Christianity  not  only  empties 
nature  of  its  fetiches,  of  its  gods  and  goddesses,  how 
ever  beautiful,  but  proclaims  it  to  be  in  itself  dead, 
worthless,  corrupt,  even  sinful — or  the  opposite  of 
divine  ;  and,  second,  it  proclaims  that  nature  has  been 
redeemed,  by  the  divine  assumption  of  it,  whereby  man, 
from  being  the  slave,  may  become  the  master  of  it,  so 
that  "  the  whole  creation"  will  yet  be  glorified.  This  is 
the  mystical  annunciation  which  every  Christian  de 
voutly  believes  :  but  what  does  it  mean  practically?  It 
means  that  nature  is  not  an  end  in  itself,  is  not  to 
be  loved  for  itself,  but  is  unworthy  and  corrupt,  except 
in  so  far  as  it  is  made  subservient  to  humanity,  in 
which  case  it  is  filled  with  a  divine  beauty  and  signifi 
cance. 

Now  our  modern  Christian  instincts  have  recognized 
these  truths,  and  hence  our  physical  sciences,  with  their 
immense  activities,  striving  to  reduce  nature,  which  has 
no  longer  any  sanctity,  to  human  uses.  Hence,  too, 
the  universality  and  fearlessness  of  our  researches  into 
nature,  which  impresses  us  no  more  as  a  vast  uncon 
trollable  power  outside  of  us,  but  as  a  mere  mechanism, 
of  whose  movements  we  hold  the  key,  whose  malig 
nities  we  may  turn  into  benignities.  Thus,  too,  the 
universe — a  world  of  effects,  whose  causes  lie  in  the 
inner  spiritual  sphere,  shines  a  vast  hieroglyph  of  the 
Eternal  and  Unseen,  is  a  glorious  analogue  of  the 
Divine.  We  love  nature,  therefore,  if  we  love  it  at  all, 
because  in  its  every  process  we  discern  emblems  of 
our  own  human  life  ;  because,  along  the  endless  multi 
plicity  of  its  forms,  the  angels  of  God  ascend  and 
descend,  as  in  the  wonderful  ladder  of  Jacob's  dream. 

We  have  dwelt  so  long  upon  this  last  volume,  that  we 
have  left  ourselves  little  space  for  any  general  estimate 
of  Mr.  Ruskin's  merits,  which  we  promised  ourselves 


Ruskiri  s  Writings.  393 

at  the  outset.  But  they  may  be  summed  up  in  few 
words.  He  is  the  critic  rather  than  the  philosopher  of 
art.  Endowed  with  the  keenest  sensibility  to  th£  influ 
ences  of  nature,  he  has  observed  them  with  accuracy, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  with  strong  poetic  feeling.  Few 
men,  again,  are  more  alive  to  the  beauties  of  art,  and 
none  have  studied  its  actual  manifestations  with  more 
diligence.  Applying  his  knowledge  of  nature  to  works 
of  art,  he  is  able  to  judge  their  comparative  merits  with 
a  rare  taste  and  profound  sympathy.  As  a  judge  he  is 
positive  and  severe,  but  also  enthusiastic.  His  praise 
and  his  blame  alike  come  from  the  heart.  He  sees 
clearly  and  feels  earnestly,  and  what  he  sees  and  feels  he 
describes  with  impetuous  eloquence.  There  are  whole 
page*  of  rhetoric  .in  his  books,  which  possess  all  the 
magnificence  of  Milton  or  Taylor.  But  he  is  not  always 
equal  in  his  style,  nor  always  just  in  his  opinions.  He 
has  a  fondness  for  extravagance,  as  well  of  thought  as 
of  expression,  and  perpetually  indulges  his  mere  con 
ceits.  He  is  apt  to  utter  decrees  instead  of  criticisms, 
and,  uttering  them  often  on  the  impulse  of  the  moment, 
they  are  not  infallible  decrees.  His  principles  of  art, 
when  they  are  correct,  proceed  more  from  instinct  than 
reason  ;  nor  has  he  digested  them  into  a  complete  and 
systematic  whole.  They  are  drawn  from  the  study  of  a 
few  arts,  and  not  from  the  study  of  the  whole  field  of 
art.  They  are  consequently  wanting  in  the  broadest 
generalizations,  and  do  not  penetrate  to  the  deepest 
grounds.  As  an  active  and  fearless  thinker,  however — 
as  a  patient  scholar,  as  an  energetic,  warm-hearted  liker 
and  hater,  and  as  an  eloquent  expositor  of  refined  tastes 
and  generous  impulses,  he  stands  unrivalled  among  the 
English  critics  of  art. 


CAUSES  OF  THE  FRENCH 
REVOLUTION.* 

|HESE  are  translations  of  the  same  work,  the 
one,  executed  in  England,  and  the  other  in  the 
United  States.  Both  appear  to  be  sufficiently 
well  done  for  the  satisfaction  of  readers  in  general.  In 
both,  we  are  glad  to  learn,  the  original  French  author 
retains  a  certain  per  centage  of  interest. 

Any  book  by  De  Tocqueville  will  be  sure  to  find 
readers  in  this  country.  He  is  so  favorably  known  by 
his  Democracy  in  America,  that  every  one,  who  is  famil 
iar  with  that  able  disquisition,  will  be  glad  to  get  anoth 
er  work  from  his  hands.  Not  that  he  is,  in  any  sense, 
an  entertaining  writer  ;  for  he  is  not :  he  is  a  slow  and 
somewhat  laborious  writer  ;  but  he  is  profound  and  in 
structive,  and  every  sentence  he  utters  is  freighted  with 
golden  thought.  He  is  one  of  the  few  Frenchmen,  or 
rather,  we  should  say,  one  of  the  few  Europeans,  who 
understands  and  cherishes  what  approximates  to  a  real 
ly  sound  theory  of  human  government.  He  is  no  be 
liever  in  the  favorite  centralism  of  his  countrymen,  mo- 
narchial  and  republican  alike.  Ask  a  legitimist  in 
France  what  his  notion  is  of  the  true  organization  of 

*  The  Old  Regime  and  the  Revolution.  BY  ALEXIS  DE  TOCOJJEVILLE. 
Translated  by  JOHN  BONNER.  Harper  &  Brothers,  New  York,  1856. 

On  the  State  of  Society  in  France  before  the  Revolution  of  1798,  and 
on  the  Causes 'which  led  to  that  event.  BY  ALEXIS  DE  TOCQUEVILLE. 
Translated  by  HENRY  RKKVK.  London:  John  Murray,  1856. 

From  Putnam" 's  Monthly ,  Nov.,  1856. 


Causes  of  the  French  Revolution.     396 

power,  and  he  will  sketch  you  out  a  scheme  something 
like  the  absolute  monarchy  of  Louis  XIV. ;  ask  a  Na- 
poleonist,  and  he  will  point  you  to  the  Empire  ;  and 
ask  a  democrat,  and  he  will  begin  to  glorify  Robespierre 
or  Ledru  Rollin  ;  yet  these  are  all  fundamentally  the 
same — the  concentration  of  the  whole  national  force  in 
a  single  focus,  differing  in  name,  but  not  differing  much 
in  essence  or  end.  De  Tocqueville  belongs  to  neither 
of  these  classes.  Though  an  aristocrat  by  affinity,  his 
study  of  our  American  townships,  combined  with  his 
own  good  sense,  has  taught  him  the  value  of  local  self- 
government  ;  and  his  criticisms  of  institutions  and  his 
torical  events  are  modified  by  this  perception. 

In  the  large  and  imposing  volume  before  us,  he 
undertakes  an  investigation  of  the  condition  of  French 
society  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  of  the  causes 
involved  in  that  condition,  which  developed  themselves 
in  the  terrific  popular  outbreak  of  the  year  1789.  It  is 
a  most  important  and  a  most  interesting  inquiry ;  for 
no  event  in  human  annals  has  more  deeply  impressed 
the  minds  of  men,  or  is  more  inexhaustible  in  its  exhibi 
tions  of  human  character,  or  more  significant  in  its  re 
sults  for  mankind.  Much  as  it  has  been  written  of,  both 
as  to  its  external  phenomena  and  as  to  its  internal  phi 
losophy,  much  more  remains  to  be  said.  The  product 
of  five  hundred  years  of  accumulating  wrongs,  the  start 
ing-point,  as  we  believe,  of  many  more  hundred  years 
of  nobler  development,  there  were  crowded  into  the 
events  of  that  brief  decade  a  pith  and  moment,  which 
no  one  writer,  and  no  one  thousand  writers,  will  readily 
exhaust.  We  think  we  must  have  read  in  our  time, 
without  an  immoderate  indulgence  in  that  particular  line, 
at  least  fifty  volumes  relating  to  the  French  Revolution, 
and  yet  our  appetite  for  the  memoirs  and  histories  of  it 
is  just  as  keen  as  it  was,  in  fact  is  keener  than  it  was, 


396  Causes  of  the 

when  the  whole  subject  came  up  as  a  novelty.  This  is 
true  however  of  all  other  knowledge,  and  especially  of 
our  knowledge  of  men  ;  the  more  we  know,  the  more 
we  want  to  know  ;  curiosity  is  never  satiated  ;  nor  is  that 
better  feeling  than  curiosity — our  deep  sympathy  in 
the  fortunes  of  our  race,  and  our  desire  to  penetrate 
the  mysterious  processes  by  which,  in  the  midst  of  so 
much  wickedness,  and  bloodshed,  and  suffering,  the 
progress  of  our  humanity  is  evolved — readily  satis 
fied.  All  events  which  seem  to  have  greatly  advanced 
or  greatly  retarded  the  course  of  events,  possess  a  peren 
nial,  living  charm. 

De  Tocqueville's  topic,  therefore,  though  old  in  one 
sense,  is  ever  fresh  in.  interest,  and  is  peculiarly  new  in 
his  treatment  of  it.  He  has  not  contented  himself  with 
repeating  the  substance  of  former  researches.  He  has 
not  gone  over  the  comprehensive  ground  which  Louis 
Blan-c  travels  with  so  much  erudition,  in  his  most  able 
introduction  to  his  history  ;  but  he  confines  his  remarks 
to  the  period  immediately  preceding  the  Revolution, 
and  to  the  actual  circumstances  of  the  time,  as  they  are 
shown  in  the  best  historical  monuments.  He  thinks 
that  the  earlier  ages  of  the  French  monarchy,  the  mid 
dle  ages,  and  the  epoch  of  the  Renaissance,  have  been 
more  studied  and  better  comprehended  than  the  eigh 
teenth  century,  though  the  latter  is  so  much  nearer  to 
us.  The  laws,  customs,  and  the  spirit  of  the  govern 
ment,  in  those  remoter  ages,  have  been  diligently  illus 
trated  by  the  most  skilful  authors  ;  but  the  eighteenth 
century  has  not  been  examined  in  the  same  minute  and 
careful  manner.  We  have  skimmed  the  glittering  sur 
face  of  its  literature  ;  we  have  been  charmed  by  its  nu 
merous  lively  biographies  ;  we  have  admired  the  inge 
nious  and  eloquent  criticisms  of  the  great  writers  :  but 
we  have  not  taken  pains  to  learn  the  mode  in  which 


French  Revolution.  397 

business  was  then  conducted  ;  to  ascertain  the  real  work 
ing  of  its  institutions  ;  to  discover  the  relative  position 
of  the  various  classes,  the  condition  and  feelings  of 
those  classes  which  were  neither  heard  nor  seen,  beneath 
the  prevailing  opinions  and  customs  of  the  day. 

All  this  our  author  has  assumed  to  do  for  us  ;  and, 
in  order  to  execute  his  purpose,  has  not  only  read  over 
again  the  famous  books  of  the  eighteenth  century — the 
Voltaires  and  the  Rousseaus,  the  Montesquieus  and 
Turgots,  the  Marmontels  and  Diderots — but  he  has 
thoroughly  sifted  obscure  yet  public  documents,  which 
show  the  opinions  and  the  tastes  of  the  French,  at  the 
approach  of  the  Revolution.  Among  these,  the  most 
important  have  been  the  regular  reports  of  the  meetings 
of  the  States,  and  subsequently,  of  the  provincial  as 
semblies,  the  cahiers  or  papers  of  instruction  (petitions 
of  grievances,  as  we  should  call  them),  drawn  up  by 
the  Three  Orders  in  1789  ;  and  particularly  the  archives 
of  the  larger  Intendencies,  as  those  districts  or  general- 
lies  were  called  which  were  presided  over  by  an  intend- 
ant,  and  often  comprised  large  circles  of  population. 
As  the  administration  was  strongly  centralized  then, 
grasping  nearly  every  interest  and  hope  of  the  people, 
and  the  communication  between  the  centre  and  the  parts 
active  and  minute,  and  withal  secret,  so  that  men  were 
not  afraid  to  lay  bare  to  it  the  wants  of  their  hearts,  and 
even  the  secrets  of  their  families,  the  records  of  these 
offices  are  filled  with  the  most  valuable  materials.  De 
Tocqueville  had  free  access  to  these,  though  it  was  not 
always  an  easy  access.  He  says  that  a  single  brief  chap 
ter  has  sometimes  cost  him  a  year  of  labor.  That  he 
was  faithful,  as  well  as  patient,  in  these  researches,  that 
he  has  concealed  nothing  and  imagined  nothing,  it 
would  be  needless  to  assure  anybody  who  is  acquainted 
with  his  habitual  and  conscientious  regard  for  truth. 


398  Causes  of  the 

The  result  of  his  inquiries  is  a  mass  of  useful  knowl 
edge,  which,  in  itself,  casts  a  broad  light  upon  the  sub 
ject  in  hand,  and  which,  it  may  be  granted,  we  have 
never  before  possessed  in  precisely  the  same  shape  ;  but 
we  feel  bound  to  add,  that  it  does  not  appear  to  us  to  be 
so  entirely  novel,  in  it  contents,  as  the  author  asserts  and 
even  boasts.  As  evidence,  it  is,  no  doubt,  new  ;  but  the 
peculiar  conclusions  which  it  is  brought  to  sustain,  are 
not  new.  We  might  take  up  almost  any  one  of  the 
propositions  advanced  as  the  headings  of  the  various 
chapters,  and  urged  in  the  text  with  a  certain  air  of  dis 
covery,  as  if  they  had  never  been  broached  before,  and 
show  that,  in  this  country  at  least,  they  have  long  been 
familiar  to  us,  so  that  they  are  not  now  considered  de 
batable  points  of  history  at  all.  That  "administrative 
centralization,"  for  instance,  was  an  institution  of 
France,  anterior  to  the  Revolution,  and  not  a  product 
of  the  Revolution  or  of  the  Empire;  that  "adminis 
trative  tutelage,"  as  the  education  and  discipline  of  the 
people  by  the  government  is  called,  was  an  institution 
in  France  anterior  to  the  Revolution  ;  that  "exceptional 
administrative  jurisdiction"  (la  justice  administrative), 
and  the  irresponsibility  of  public  officers  (garantie  des 
fondionnaires'},  existed  under  the  old  regime;  that  the 
metropolis  of  France  had  usurped  a  preponderating 
control  over  the  nation  long  before  the  Revolution  ; 
that  the  condition  of  the  French  peasantry,  in  spite  of 
the  general  progress  of  civilization,  was  in  some  re 
spects  worse  in  the  eighteenth  century  than  it  had  been 
in  the  thirteenth  ;  that,  toward  the  middle  of  the  eigh 
teenth  century,  men  of  letters  had  become  the  leading 
political  men  of  France  ;  that  irreligion,  at  that  time, 
had  reached  an  unusual  and  dominant  influence  in  so 
ciety  ;  and  that,  under  Louis  XVI.,  the  French  people 
were  encouraged  to  revolt,  by  the  very  means  taken  to 


French  Revolution.  399 

relieve  them  ;  are  surely  not  propositions  which  will 
strike  any  intelligent  American,  nor,  we  suspect,  any 
intelligent  English  reader  of  French  history,  with  any  de 
gree  of  surprise.  We  have  been  accustomed  to  regard 
these  propositions  as  facts,  and  our  surprise  is  rather,  that 
they  can  be  adduced  and  argued  with  so  much  gravity, 
by  De  Tocqueville,  as  something  of  which  the  world 
has  not  been  before  adequately  aware.  The  condition 
of  opinion  in  France,  and  particularly  the  errors  which 
prevail  among  ill-informed  persons,  as  to  the  precise 
nature  and  achievements  of  the  Revolution,  together 
with  the  tendency,  almost  universal  in  that  country,  to 
overlook  the  defects  of  the  national  Constitution,  may 
render  this  tone  of  remark  necessary ;  but  we  cannot 
suppose  that  these  views  have  at  all  escaped  genuine 
historical  students  anywhere.  At  any  rate,  in  this 
country,  it  is  rather  an  elementary  proceeding,  in  spec 
ulations  on  the  philosophy  of  the  Revolution,  to  refer 
it  to  the  phenomena  above  enumerated,  and,  most  es 
pecially,  to  that  increase  of  "administrative  centraliza 
tion"  which  was  at  once  both  cause  and  effect  of  the 
absolute  dominion  of  the  French  monarchs. 

This  we  may  have  occasion  to  dwell  upon  in  another 
aspect,  hereafter,  but  in  the  mean  time  let  us  repeat  that 
our  author's  proofs  are  original  and  profoundly  interest 
ing,  though  his  principles  do  not  present  themselves  to 
us  in  the  same  freshness  of  light. 

We  recognize  De  Tocqueville,  in  spite  of  certain 
opinions  widely  divergent  from  our  own,  as  belonging 
to  the  legitimate  school  of  historical  philosophers.  He 
is  neither  a  fanatic  nor  a  fatalist ;  he  does  not  adopt  too 
exclusively  the  doctrine  of  necessary  causation  in  his 
tory,  nor  of  absolute  human  freedom  ;  but  admitting 
fully  the  truth  of  an  organic  and  continuous  connection 
of  events,  he  also  retains  the  other  truth,  of  an  over- 


400  Causes  of  the 

ruling  Providence.     One   class    of  thinkers,    like   the 
rhetorical  theologians  (who  can  scarcely  be  called  phi 
losophers),  see  in  the  French  Revolution  only  a  tremen 
dous  and  almost  causeless  outburst  of  human  wicked 
ness,  and  to  these  the  splendid  ravings  of  Burke  are  to 
this  day  a  kind  of  political  gospel.     Another  class,  like 
Thiers  and  Mignet,  and  to  a  certain  extent,  though  from 
a  higher  plane  of  vision,  Carlyle,  see  in  it  an  inevitable 
and  mysterious  destiny,  which  moved  the  men  of  the 
times  from  its  dark  recesses,  as  puppets  are  moved  by 
wires  from  behind  till  they  glide  and  gibber  before  us 
like  spectral  figures.,  who  are  the  sport  of  a  mocking 
and  remorseless    fate.      But  there   is  another,  and,  we 
think,  a  better  class,  who,  while  they  cherish  a  profound 
and    grateful  faith,  that   the   ''Lord    God    omnipotent 
reigneth,"  yet  believe  that  he  reigns  through  the  free  in 
strumentality  of  men.     These  maintain  that  the  move 
ments  of  society  are  organic  and  living  developments  ; 
that  all  events  are  in  some  sort  dependent  upon  preced 
ing  events  ;  that  they  are  not  wholly  wanton  and  wilful, 
but    conditional,    and  that,    while  the  sources  of  life, 
social  as  well  as  individual,  are  in  the  infinite  and  eter 
nal  world,  the  forms  of  that  life,  the  phenomenal  mani 
festations  of  it,  are  controlled  by  the  whole  complex  of 
what  we  denominate  historical  circumstances.      It  is  to 
this  school,   if  we    mistake  not,    that   De  Tocqueville 
adheres,   and  therefore,   while  he  exempts  no  class  or 
individual  from  the  guilt  of  their  misdeeds,  nor  with 
holds  from  any  the  merit  of  their  good  actions,  he  seeks 
the  causes  of  the  revolutionary  phenomena  in  the  vices 
of  the  old  regime.      He  discerns  clearly  that  the  stu 
pendous  insurrection  at  the  close  of  the  last  century, 
which  filled  the  world   with  mingled    admiration  and 
dismay,  was  no  sudden  or  satanic  impulse  ;  but  that  it 
had  been   long  preparing,  and  that  much   of  the  good 


French  Revolution.  401 

and  nearly  all  the  evil  of  it,  sprang  directly  out  of  the 
whole  course  of  the  monarchical  civilization. 

We  cannot  suppose,  however,  that  the  event  was  so 
entirely  unexpected  as  our  author  represents,  because 
that  would  argue  a  strange  lack  of  sagacity  and  obser 
vation  on  the  part  of  its  contemporaries.  Undoubt 
edly,  it  is  true,. as  he  says,  that  no  one  perceived  its 
pressing  imminence  or  anticipated  its  extent.  The  aris 
tocratic  classes  were  quite  blind  in  regard  to  it ;  the 
neighboring  sovereigns  and  princes  themselves,  as  late 
as  1791,  though  professing  to  see,  in  the  danger  which 
threatened  royalty  in  France,  a  danger  common  to  all 
the  established  powers  of  Europe,  yet  secretly  imagined 
that  the  outbreak  was  a  local  and  temporary  accident, 
which  they  might  turn  to  good  account  ;  but  there  was 
a  positive  presentiment  of  it  among  the  masses,  while 
one  not  inconsiderable  sect,  the  mystic  revolutionists, 
the  disciples  respectively  of  Weishaupt,  Saint  Martin, 
and  the  arch-quack  Cagliostro,  seemed  to  have  shaped 
as  distinct  an  apprehension  of  the  coming  time  as  it  was 
possible  for  their  excited  imaginations  to  frame  on  any 
subject.*  It  was  from  among  these  cabalistic  spirits  that 
Cazotte,  the  author  of  the  Diable  Amoureux,  the  (Euvres 
badines  el  morales,  and  of  that  continuation  of  the  Ara 
bian  Nights,  forming  the  37th  and  4Oth  volumes  of  the 
Cabinet  des  fees,  emerged,  and  of  whom  La  Harpe  re 
lates  the  well-known  and  singularly  impressive  incident, 
but  now  discredited,  which  is  said  to  have  occurred  in 
the  saloon  of  one  of  the  eminent  academicians  of  the 
time. 

A  gay  company  of  courtiers  and  philosophes  were 
dining  once,  in  1778,  when  the  conversation  turned,  as 
usual,  upon  the  promising  prospects  of  the  age,  and 

*  LUCHET.     Essai  sur  les   Illumines.     Paris,  1789. 


4O2  Caztses  of  the 

the  rapid  approach  of  the  era  of  intellectual  emancipa 
tion.      During  the  animated  dialogue,  Cazotte  was  ob 
served  to  remain  sombre  and  silent.      Being  rallied  by 
Condorcet,   he   remarked    that  he    saw   terrible    things 
in  the  future,  and,  "  as  for  you,  Monsieur  Condorcet," 
he  added,   "you  will  take  poison  to  escape  the  execu 
tioner."     This   unexpected    retort   provoked    peals    of 
laughter  from  the  lively  company.      But  Cazotte,  noth 
ing  disconcerted,  turned  first  to  Chamfort,  the  cynical 
poet  and  wit,  and   predicted  that  he  would   open   his 
veins  ;  and  next  to  Bailly,  the  astronomer  and  first  pres 
ident   of  the  National .  Assembly,   to    Malesherbes,   the 
venerable  parliamentarian  and  censor,  and  to  Roucher, 
translator   of    Adam    Smith,    saying   that  each    would 
perish  on  the  scaffold.     "  Our  sex,  at  least,"  interposed 
the  charming  Duchess   de  Grammont,   "  will  escape." 
"  Your  sex,  madam  ?"  replied  Cazotte  ;  "  no  !  you,  and 
other  ladies  besides  you,  will  be  drawn  upon  a  cart,  with 
your  hands  tied  behind  your  backs,  to  a  place  of  exe 
cution."     "Without  even  a  confessor  ?"  she  smilingly 
asked.      "Without    even    a   confessor,"  he    resumed; 
"for  the  last  confessor  will  be  reserved" — and  here  his 
sad  eyes  filled  with  tears — "  for  the  King  of  France." 
This  announcement  startled  the    assembly,   when    Ca 
zotte  arose  to  retire,  but  the  Duchess  caught  hold  of  him, 
exclaiming,  "And  pray,  sir  prophet,  what  is  to  be  your 
fate  ?"     He  stood  for  some  time  lost  in  profound  reve 
rie,  and  finally  narrated,  that  "  during  the  siege  of  Je 
rusalem,  a  man  had  paraded  the  ramparts  seven  days 
in  succession,  crying  out  in  mournful  accents,   '  Woe 
unto  thee,  Jerusalem,'  and  that,  on  the  seventh  day,  a 
stone,  flung  by  the  enemy,   struck   him,   and  crushed 
him  to  death."     Cazotte  was  afterward  arrested,  during 
the  massacre  of  September,  and  hung.     Non  e  vero  mat 
bene   irovaio.       Indeed,    it   is   impossible   to    read    De 


French  Revolution.  403 

Tocqueville's  own  exposition  of  the  state  of  opinion, 
during  the  period  he  describes,  without  feeling  that  the 
French  mind  must  have  been  singularly  obtuse  not  to 
discern  the  multitudinous  signs  appearing  on  all  sides, 
of  some  new  and  tremendous  overturn. 

The  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  French  Revolu 
tion  implies  the  solution  of  several  subordinate  ques 
tions,  such  as  why  that  event  took  place  at  all  ;  why  it 
took  place  when  it  did,  and  not  before  ;  why  it  occurred 
among  the  French,  rather  than  among  the  other  people 
of  Europe  ;  and  why,  when  it  did  come  about,  it  was 
characterized  by  such  wholly  new  and  peculiar  features? 
These  solutions  we  shall  not  undertake,  because  it 
would  require  a  volume  to  treat  them  even  superficially, 
but  we  may  remark,  that  it  is  obvious  at  a  glance,  that 
a  successful  treatment  of  them  would  demand  a  far 
more  various  and  retrospective  study  than  our  author 
has  given  merely  to  the  eighteenth  century.  His  re 
sults  possess  a  high  degree  of  value,  and  they  strongly 
elucidate  antecedent  periods  ;  but,  to  arrive  at  an  intel 
ligent  view  of  the  origin  and  of  the  entire  scope  and 
bearing  of  the  French  Revolution,  we  should  begin  at 
least  with  the  ministry  of  Richelieu,  if  not,  indeed,  with 
the  triumph  of  modern  monarchy  over  feudalism  in 
the  fifteenth  century. 

During  the  middle  ages-,  as  it  has  often  been  re 
marked  by  historians,  there  was  a  remarkable  similarity 
in  the  political  and  social  institutions  of  nearly  the 
whole  of  Europe — that  is,  of  civilized  Europe.  There 
were  differences  of  detail  and  of  name  in  different 
countries,  but  very  much  the  same  spirit  and  form. 
Society  was  divided  into  the  same  classes — into  princes, 
nobles,  clergy,  burghers,  and  peasants,  with  similar 
privileges  or  burdens — the  municipal  constitutions 
were  alike— the  same  maxims  controlled  the  political 


404  Causes  of  the 

assemblies — and  the  land  was  owned,  occupied,  tilled, 
and  taxed  after  the  same  fashion.  Everywhere  there 
existed  the  same  seignories  or  lords'  estates,  the  same 
manorial  courts,  and  fiefs,  and  feudal  services,  and 
quit-rents ;  and  in  the  towns,  corporations  and  trading- 
guilds. 

But,  during  the  fifteenth  century,  a  general  change 
in  this  condition  of  things  was  effected — a  change  which 
undermined  the  ancient  feudal  constitution,  and  brought 
in,  in  the  place  of  it,  the  modern  nationalities  under 
the  vigorous  reign  of  monarchs.  In  France,  the  house 
of  Valois,  after  a  series  of  protracted  and  sanguinary 
struggles,  had  triumphed  over  the  great  feudatories, 
consolidated  the  territory  of  the  realm,  and  introduced 
new  principles  of  administration,  which  gave  at  once 
more  unity  and  more  permanence  to  the  power  of  tax 
ation,  to  the  regular  army,  and  to  the  parliaments  or 
courts  of  justice.  In  Spain,  the  fierce  combat  between 
the  Moors  and  Christians  was  brought  to  an  end  by  the 
conquest  of  Granada  ;  the  marriage  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella  had  united  the  two  principal  kingdoms  of  Cas 
tile  and  Aragon  into  a  single  state ;  the  great  and  tur 
bulent  vassals  were  suppressed  or  restrained,  and  the 
power  of  the  monarchy  in  various  ways  enlarged  and 
confirmed.  In  Germany,  again,  the  imperial  crown, 
which  had  always  been  elective,  and  still  remained  so 
nominally,  became  virtually  hereditary  in  the  family  of 
Maximilian.  In  England  arose,  out  of  the  wars  of  the 
Roses,  in  which  so  many  of  the  nobles  had  perished, 
the  dynasty  of  the  Tudors.  The  various  Italian  repub 
lics,  stormy  and  brilliant  as  they  had  been,  fell  under 
the  sway  of  powerful  and  wealthy  houses — Florence  to 
the  Medici,  Lombardy  to  the  dukes  of  Milan,  and 
Genoa,  Venice,  and  Naples  to  foreign  sovereigns — who 
made  their  soil  the  battle-fields  of  their  rival  claims. 


French  Revolution.  40  5 

Everywhere  the  old  feudal  and  anarchical  system  was 
falling  into  decay,  and  a  new  system — the  system  of 
national  royalties — advanced  to  its  place. 

From  this  point,  however,  the  subsequent  develop 
ments  became  exceedingly  diverse.  The  political 
liberties  of  Italy  perished  almost  immediately,  in  con 
sequence  of  the  incessant  wars  of  petty  and  rival  sov 
ereigns  ;  Spain  grew  into  the  magnificent  empire  of 
Charles  V.  and  of  Philip  II. ,  and  then  withered  away  ; 
France  achieved,  under  the  successive  administrations 
of  Sully,  of  Richelieu,  of  Mazarin,  and  Louis  XIV.,  a 
degree  of  splendor  which  dazzled  all  Europe,  but  was 
then  destined  to  flicker,  and  corrupt,  and  sink,  until 
the  Revolution  came  to  sweep  away  nearly  every 
trace  of  its  specious  glory  ;  while  Germany  fell  apart 
into  numerous  principalities,  mostly  insignificant,  and 
England  alone,  after  rocking  in  the  tempests  of  civil 
commotion  for  a  while,  attained  to  a  really  secure, 
stable,  and  free  constitution. 

Now,  what  were  the  causes  of  this  difference  ?  The 
aristocratic  writers  tell  us  (and  De  Tocqueville  is  of 
their  number)  that  it  was  mainly  owing  to  the  greater 
or  less  destruction  in  each  of  the  ancient  nobility. 
Aristocracy  is  assumed  to  be  an  indispensable  check 
upon  the  despotic  powers  of  the  kings,  so  that  where 
the  former  is  removed  the  latter  rise  into  absolutism  ; 
while  it  is  only  where  the  former  retains  an  effective 
existence,  <iat  the  equipoise  of  a  regulated  and  mod 
erate  monarchy  is  reached  and  preserved.  How  many 
changes  of  eulogistic  phrase  are  rung  upon  this  theory 
by  our  English  friends  ?  But  is  it  an  adequate  inter 
pretation  of  the  facts  ?  Does  it  not  ascribe  to  the  ser 
vices  of  a  class,  results  which  properly  belong  to  popular 
institutions,  which  may  have  been  identified,  to  some 
extent,  with  that  class,  although  the  class  was  not  es- 


406  Causes  of  the 

sential  to  them  ?  In  other  words,  are  not  the  liberties 
of  England  owing  to  its  parliaments,  its  courts,  and  its 
local  meetings,  as  free  assemblies  in  which  the  popular 
heart  can  find  some  expression  for  itself,  and  the  popu 
lar  mind  obtain  a  true  perception  of  the  nature,  end, 
and  right  practice  of  government,  rather  than  to  the 
ascendency  of  any  class  which  may  have  had  the  cun 
ning  or  the  virtue  to  connect  its  own  cause  with  that  of 
these  institutions  ?  We  confess  that  such  is  our  opinion  ; 
we  confess  that  our  studies  of  history  have  left  us  little 
respect  for  nobility  anywhere  ;  and  we  are  clear  that, 
though  it  may  have  been  at  times  of  transitional  advan 
tage  to  the  growth  of  a  higher  civilization,  it  has  been  far 
more  frequently  and  permanently  a  serious  detriment. 

This  view  we  have  not  the  space  to-  unfold,  in  regard 
to  all  the  nations  of  Europe  ;  but  it  is  apropos  to  our 
text  to  consider  it  in  reference  to  France,  particularly 
as  a  main  object  of  De  Tocqueville  is  to  show  that 
despotism  is  an  unavoidable  outgrowth  of  those  societies 
in  which  the  aristocracies  have  been  swept  away.  His 
argument  runs  as  follows  :  "That  when  men  are  no 
longer  bound  together  by  the  ties  of  caste,  of  class,  of 
corporation,  of  family,  they  are  but  too  prone  to  think 
of  nothing  but  their  private  interests,  too  ready  to  con 
sider  themselves  only,  and  to  sink  into  the  narrow  pre 
cincts  of  self,  in  which  all  public  virtue  is  extinguished. 
Despotism,  instead  of  combating  this  tendency,  ren 
ders  it  irresistible,  for  it  deprives  its  subjects  of  every 
common  passion,  of  every  mutual  want,  of  all  necessity 
of  combining  together,  of  all  occasions  of  acting  to 
gether.  It  immures  them  in  private  life ;  they  already 
tended  to  separation,  despotism  isolates  them  ;  they 
were  already  chilled  in  their  mutual  regard,  despotism 
reduces  them  to  ice."  The  doctrine  is,  that  the  emas 
culation  of  the  ancient  nobility,  by  removing  a  prin- 


French  Revolution.  407 

cipal  obstacle  to  the  growth  of  absolute  royalty,  was 
calamitous  in  its  effects,  and  the  inference  from  that 
doctrine,  that  to  restore  the  liberties  of  France,  some 
thing  like  the  old  aristocracy  should  be  restored.  We 
oppose  both  the  doctrine  and  the  inference  :  we  assert, 
bad  as  the  French  monarchy  became,  that  it  was  better 
than  the  rapacious  and  turbulent  rule  of  the  classes  it 
supplanted  ;  and  we  hold  that  the  issue  from  the  tower 
ing  centralism  into  which  it  has  congested,  is  not 
through  the  revival  of  those  classes,  but  by  the  estab 
lishment  of  free  local  institutions. 

In  order  to  test  the  value  of  these  conflicting  posi 
tions,  we  need  only  recall  the  actual  history  of  the 
French  nobles,  from  the  time  of  their  appearance  as 
feudal  sovereigns  to  the  day  in  which  they  were  so  ef 
fectively  abased  by  Richelieu,  or  converted  into  mere 
court  lackeys  by  Louis  XIV.  No  one,  we  presume, 
will  contend,  that  the  enormous  prerogatives  enjoyed 
by  the  French  peers  and  barons,  during  the  middle 
ages  and  afterward,  conduced  greatly  to  the  benefit  of 
society.  Though  nominally  vassals  of  the  crown,  these 
great  feudatories  were  possessed  of  privileges  which 
conferred  upon  them  an  almost  independent  dominion. 
They  were  the  lords,  and,  to  a  large  extent,  the  owners 
of  vast  territories ;  they  coined  money ;  they  waged 
private  war  ;  they  exercised  judicial  powers,  and  they 
were  exempt  from  all  public  tributes,  except  the  feudal 
aids,  and  free  of  all  legislative  control.  Nor  were 
they  backward  in  the  use  of  these  powers.  Their  right 
of  coining  money  they  often  converted  into  a  means  of 
debasing  the  standard.  The  most  frivolous  passion 
served  as  a  pretext  for  plunging  them  in  destructive 
hostilities,  while  the  luxury  of  their  courts,  and  the  ex 
penses  incident  to  their  frequent  feuds,  led  to  the  most 
oppressive  exactions  from  the  people.  Spending  their 


z|o3  Causes  of  the 

lives  in  the  chase,  or  in  war,  or  in  pillage,  intent  each 
one  on  his  interest,  rather  than  upon  the  foundation  of 
order  in  the  State,  opposing  the  municipalities,  where 
the  only  germs  of  popular  freedom  were  nourished, 
harassing  the  trade  of  the  citizen,  and  plundering  the 
labor  of  the  peasant,  it  was  impossible,  while  their 
power  lasted,  that  there  should  be  either  private  security, 
national  consolidation,  or  general  development. 

It  was  partly  the  perception  of  these  abuses,  partly 
their  own  selfish  love  of  aggrandizement,  and  partly  the 
demands  of  the  suffering  burghers  and  people,  which 
led  the  French  kings,  one  after  another,  to  endeavor  to 
strip  them  of  their  overgrown  resources.  Sometimes 
by  the  forcible  seizure  of  their  domains,  as  of  the  Ver- 
mandois,  by  Philip  Augustus  ;  sometimes  by  interposing 
in  behalf  of  the  weaker  clas'ses,  as  was  frequently  done 
by  good  St.  Louis  ;  sometimes  by  perfidious  declara 
tions  of  forfeitures  against  extensive  fiefs,  as  under  Philip 
the  Fair,  the  privileges  of  the  great  vassals  were  under 
mined  and  the  authority  of  the  crown  extended.  Yet, 
in  spite  of  these  interferences,  in  spite  of  the  reduction 
of  their  numbers,  effected  by  their  own  wasteful  strife, 
and  by  the  distant  expeditions  of  the  crusades  ;  in 
spite  of  their  gradual  loss  of  privileges,  by  the  growth 
of  the  cities,  and  the  advent  of  the  legists  to  judicial 
honors,  by  which  they  were  deprived  of  an  important 
means  of  distinction  and  influence  ;  and  in  spite  of  the 
mercenary  multiplication  of  their  number,  which  de 
stroyed,  in  a  measure,  unity  of  feeling  and  action,  they 
continued  for  centuries  a  strenuous  though  unequal 
struggle  against  the  supremacy  of  the  monarchs. 

As  late  as  the  time  of  the  religious  wars,  which  fol 
lowed  the  Reformation,  they  were  able  to  dictate  to  the 
throne,  then  occupied  by  a  weak  and  superstitious 
prince,  and  to  bring  upon  their  nation  the  eternal  dis- 


French  Revolution.  409 

grace  of  the  massacre  of  Vassy  and  the  horrors  of  St. 
Bartholomew.  One  needs  but  to  read  the  infamous 
proceedings  of  the  Guises  and  the  League — now  con 
ferring  secretly  with  the  bigoted  Philip  II.,  and  now 
openly  with  the  scarcely  less  bigoted  Pope,  for  the  means 
of  more  effectually  assassinating  their  sovereigns  or 
butchering  the  Calvinists — to  see  that  the  high  nobility 
were  still  an  independent  and  pernicious  power  in  the 
state,  and  to  find  an  ample  justification  for  nearly  every 
stretch  of  authority  which  marked  the  policy  of  Riche 
lieu.  Neither  Gaston  nor  Conde,  neither  Soissons  nor 
Vendome,  any  more  than  the  Constable  Bourbon  of  a 
former  day,  or  a  Cinq-Mars  of  their  own  day,  appear 
to  have  cherished  any  sense  of  obligation  toward  France, 
any  patriotic  sentiment,  any  thought  of  duty  beyond 
their  duty  to  their  own  interests,  any  aspiration  which 
reached  outside  the  objects  of  their  avarice^  their  am 
bition,  and  their  pride.  For  a  moment,  the  impulses 
of  fear  or  hope  might  bring  them  to  submission  to  the 
royal  standard  ;  but  neither  fear,  nor  hope,  nor  any  other 
motive  could  ever  bend  them  to  the  cause  of  the  peo 
ple.  No  name  was  sacred,  no  law  authoritative  to  their 
insane  selfishness  ;  they  openly  conspired  with  foreigners; 
they  betrayed  their  engagements  ;  and  when  they  were 
finally  broken,  by  the  masterly  genius  of  the  great  Cardi 
nal,  the  mind  of  the  reader  of  French  history,  though 
disapproving  often  his  means,  is  relieved  as  from  the 
presence  of  banditti. 

No,  the  growth  of  absolute  royalty  was  evidenced, 
not  occasioned,  by  the  destruction  of  the  nobles.  The 
extensions  of  power  in  that  direction  were  not  an  unmin- 
gled,  yet  they  were  an  undoubted  good.  They  gave 
union  to  a  series  of  distracted  states  ;  substituted  great 
general  ends  of  policy  for  petty  schemes  of  personal 
gain  ;  raised  merit,  if  not  above  rank  and  birth,  at  least 
18 


Causes  of  the 

to  a  level  with  them  ;  elevated  justice  and  its  tribunals, 
and  introduced  to  places  of  trust  and  honor,  once  the 
exclusive  possession  of  warlike  nobles,  lawyers  and  eccle 
siastics,  who  were  their  superiors  in  everything  but  family. 

At  the  same  time,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  kings 
and  their  ministers  went  much  further  than  this — that 
in  reducing  society  to  this  monarchical  unity,  which 
was  so  largely  personal,  their  action  sacrificed  also  many 
useful  ancient  institutions,  that  it  trampled  upon  the  just 
rights  of  provinces  and  cities,  that  it  violated  what  we 
now  consider  to  be,  and,  were  always  considered  by  ad 
vanced  minds,  fundamental  principles  of  justice  and 
law,  and  that  the  regime  which  it  inaugurated  could  in 
no  sense  become  a  definitive  one,  could  in  no  sense 
answer  the  demands  of  reason,  or  patriotism,  or  the 
free  human  soul ;  but  it  was  not  for  these  that  the  aris 
tocracy  had  lived  and  labored,  nor  for  these  that  their 
prolonged  existence,  in  the  plenitude  of  their  power, 
would  have  been  profitable.  Greatly  as  they  had  been 
despoiled  by  the  monarchs,  there  was  yet  scarcely  a  period 
in  their  career  in  which  they  might  not,  had  they  been 
wise  and  generous,  as  they  were  mostly  selfish  and  proud, 
have  done  much  to war.d  arresting  the  rapid  concentration 
of  power  in  a  single  hand;  but,  up  to  the  very  eve  of 
the  Revolution,  they  were  more  anxious  about  their 
own  privileges  than  the  welfare  of  the  people,  and, 
while  the  nation  was  bound  and  paralyzed  by  the  burden 
of  taxes,  they  vehemently  maintained  their  traditional 
exemptions. 

The  circumstances  which  really  permitted  the  tower 
ing  uprise  of  the  monarchy  were,  as  we  think,  the  es 
sential  weakness  of  all  the  municipal  institutions  of 
France,  combined  with  the  absence  of  all  free  legislative  as 
semblies,  provincial  or  supreme.  In  common  with  those 
of  the  rest  of  Europe,  the  French  towns  and  boroughs, 


French  Revolution.  4 1 1 

during  the  twelfth  century,  experienced  that  movement 
toward  communal  independence  which  was  among  the 
most  remarkable  phenomena  of  the  age.  Many  of 
them,  known  as  the  pays  d'Ltats,  such  as  Languedoc, 
Brittany,  Provence,  Artois,  etc.,  either  by  stubborn  te 
nacity  or  purchase,  retained  the  more  important  of  their 
privileges,  especially  elective  magistrates  and  deliberative 
assemblies,  up  to  a  late  day ;  but  the  greater  part  of 
them,  having  none  but  a  municipal  existence,  having 
no  political  relation  to  a  regular  parliament,  like  the 
English  towns,  were  easily  weakened  by  the  rapacious 
nobles,  who  were  nearly  always  their  enemies,  to  be  at 
last  swallowed  up  by  the  kings,  who  were  sometimes 
their  friends  and  sometimes  their  tyrants. 

No  doubt  the  rapid  increase  of  wealth  in  the  towns 
helped  to  undermine  their  strength  by  relaxing  their 
heroism.  At  the  outset,  the  communes  had  displayed 
extraordinary  virtue  and  vigor  in  the  defence  of  their 
citizen  rights.  The  sturdy  streams  of  artisans  and 
burghers  which  they  poured  from  the  Hotel  de  Ville, 
were  a  drowning  torrent  for  the  pillaging  barons  of  the 
vicinage  ;  but  as  the  gains  of  industry  swelled  up  around 
them,  as  the  fruitful  arts  of  peace  caused  them  to  dread 
the  storms  of  battle,  they  lost  the  joy  of  conflict,  they 
withdrew  even  from  the  lesser  disputes  of  the  council, 
and  the  bell,  which  had  summoned  them  to  the  assem 
bly  or  the  gate,  ceased  to  sound. 

And  while  this  local  spirit  was  undergoing  decay,  while 
the  rights  of  the  cities  and  the  states  were  being  gradually 
subtracted,  there  existed  no  great  and  disinterested  cen 
tral  authority,  to  which  the  people  could  make  their 
wrongs  known  or  appeal  for  redress.  The  States-Gen 
eral,  as  the  occasional  assemblies  of  the  clergy,  the 
nobles,  and  the  third  estate  are  called,  make  a  con 
spicuous  figure  in  French  history  ;  but  they  were 


412  Causes  of  the 

always  more  remarkakle  for  high  pretensions  than  ef 
fective  performance.  They  were  not  strictly  legislative 
assemblies — the  extent  of  their  powers  as  a  whole,  as  well 
as  the  extent  of  the  powers  of  each  chamber,  were  always 
in  doubt ;  and  if  we  except  a  few  scenes  of  memorable 
resistance  to  the  royal  authority,  in  which  they  were 
aided  as  much  by  external  circumstances  as  by  their 
own  spirit,  they  were  no  check  upon  the  kings,  and  no 
guaranty  for  the  rights  of  the  people. 

A  far  more  efficient  organ,  in  both  respects,  were  the 
parliaments,  as  the  affiliated  courts  of  justice  were  de 
nominated.  Their  veneration  for  forms,  if  not  their 
sense  of  justice  or  love  of  liberty,  often  interposed  be 
tween  the  interests  of  the  community  and  the  ambition 
of  the  kings  ;  and  some  of  the  noblest  scenes  in  the 
annals  of  France  are  to  be  found  in  the  struggles  of 
these  grave  and  long-robed  clerks  against  the  overbear 
ing  tyranny  of  ministers  and  favorites.  But,  like  the 
States-General,  they  were  badly  constituted  ;  their  ob 
jects  were  confused  between  their  judicial  and  their  legis 
lative  functions,  while,  holding  their  places  by  a  venal 
tenure,  they  were  not  always  raised  above  temptation, 
either  from  the  court  or  the  populace.  In  short,  we  do 
not  discover  that  there  existed  anywhere  in  France,  from 
the  beginning  of  its  political  existence  as  a  nation,  any  of 
those  great  and  indelible  maxims  of  justice  which  are 
the  glory  of  the  common  law  of  England — any  of  those 
local  tribunals,  which  keep  alive  in  the  breasts  of  the 
people  the  knowledge  of  their  rights  and  the  practice  of 
self-government,  nor  any  of  those  larger  central  assem 
blies,  in  which  all  classes  meet,  to  state  their  grievances, 
to  compare  their  opinions,  to  unite  against  a  common 
oppression,  and  to  adjust  their  conflicting  claims. 

Is  it  surprising,  then,  that  the  royal  authority  should 
have  inflamed  into  monstrous  disproportions  ;  that  the 


French  Revolution.  413 

kings — legislators  from  the  beginning — commanders  of 
armies  from  the  beginning — dispensers  of  justice,  with 
the  exception  of  some  intervals,  from  the  beginning — 
should  also  become  the  sole  administrators?  How  was 
it  possible  to  resist  their  aggrandizement,  except  as  it 
was  finally  resisted,  by  popular  revolution  ?  Or  how, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  it  possible  for  a  structure  so  top- 
heavy,  so  thoroughly  without  basis,  as  the  old  monarchy, 
to  continue  its  vertiginous  career  ?  At  the  height  of  its 
glory,  which  was  during  the  first  half  of  Louis  XlVth's 
reign,  it  was  already  crumbling.  It  made,  for  a  century 
nearly,  convulsive  efforts  to  retain  an  upright  position  ; 
but  they  were  in  vain  ;  it  only  reeled  and  staggered  the 
more,  till,  under  the  amiable  and  helpless  Louis  Seize, 
it  fell  to  the  ground. 

After  this  brief  historical  reference,  we  are  prepared 
to  estimate  the  political  state  of  France  under  the 
Louises,  which  is  the  proper  subject  of  De  Tocque- 
ville's  book.  The  government,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  king  :  not  the  general 
government  alone — that  which  conducts  foreign  affairs 
and  the  national  interests  as  a  whole — but  the  govern 
ment  down  to  its  minutest  offices  in  the  districts  and 
towns,  with  few  exceptions.  All  the  parochial  business, 
even,  was  transacted  by  functionaries  who  were  neither 
the  agents  of  the  local  lords  or  seigneurs,  nor  the  chosen 
representatives  of  the  parish  (though,  in  some  cases, 
they  were  elected  by  the  peasants),  but  the  appointees 
of  the  royal  Intendants.  If  a  parish  meeting  were  to 
be  held,  or  a  road  repaired,  or  a  church  or  school-house 
built,  or  taxes  raised  and  expended,  these  officers,  hold 
ing  from  the  central  authority,  were  the  persons  charged 
with  the  supervision.  They  were  responsible,  not  to 
the  community,  but  to  the  Intendants,  and  these 
Intendants  were  the  creatures  of  the  royal  council,  as 


414  Causes  of  the 

that  body  immediately  surrounding  the  king,  and  which 
had  gradually  drawn  within  itself  nearly  all  the  supreme 
judicial  and  administrative  functions,  was  named. 
Their  powers  were  scarcely  less  than  those  of  the  council 
itself,  and  were  exercised  by  them,  for  the  most  part, 
without  much  regard  to  any  other  end  than  the  exigen 
cies  of  the  State.  Thus  all  ranks  of  society  were  dis 
pensed  from  those  habitual  interferences  in  public 
affairs,  which  are  their  best  education  in  the  practice  of 
self-government.  But  while  their  own  energies  were 
paralyzed,  they  were  taught  to  rely  upon  those  of  the 
government ;  and  the  more  ignorant  soon  came  to 
ascribe  to  it  all  the  vicissitudes  of  fortune — even  the 
inclemencies  of  the  climate,  or  the  failure  of  crops,  no 
less  than  the  reverses  of  war. 

M.  De  Tocqueville  says  :  "The  French  government, 
having  thus  assumed  the  place  of  Providence,  it  was 
natural  that  every  one  should  invoke  its  aid  in  his  indi 
vidual  necessities.  Accordingly,  we  find  an  immense 
number  of  petitions  which,  while  affecting  to  relate  to 
the  public  interest,  really  concern  only  small  individual 
interests.  It  is  a  melancholy  task  to  read  them  :  we 
find  peasants  praying  to  be  indemnified  for  the  loss  of 
their  cattle  or  their  horses  ;  wealthy  landowners  asking 
for  assistance  in  rendering  their  estates  more  productive  ; 
manufacturers  soliciting  from  the  Intendant  privileges, 
by  which  they  may  be  protected  from  a  troublesome 
competition  ;  and  very  frequently  confiding  the  embar 
rassed  state  of  their  affairs  to  him,  and  begging  him  to 
obtain  for  them  relief,  or  a  loan  from  the  comptroller- 
general.  Even  the  nobles  were  often  very  importunate 
solicitors,  the  only  mark  of  their  condition  being  the 
lofty  tone  in  which  they  begged."  "  Every  man  already 
blamed  the  government  for  all  his  sufferings.  The 


French  Revolution.  41 5 

most  inevitable  privations  were  ascribed  to  it,  and  even 
the  inclemency  of  the  seasons  was  made  a  subject  of 
reproach  to  it." 

The  nobles,  though  deprived  of  their  powers,  still 
possessed  many  of  their  most  oppressive  privileges,  and 
much  of  their  infatuated  exclusiveness.  The  army  was 
still  open  to  them,  and,  to  a  small  .extent,  the  seats  of 
justice ;  but  they  had  almost  ceased  to  display  their 
characteristic  gallantry  in  the  one,  or  to  be  qualified  for 
influence  in  the  other.  Drawn  from  their  estates,  on 
which  the  old  loyal  retainer  had  become  the  defiant 
tenant,  by  the  superior  attractions  of  the  capital  and  the 
court,  the  love  of  degenerate  pleasure  supplanted  the 
former  passion  for  rule.  They  cultivated  wit,  grace, 
agreeable  conversation  and  manners — the  qualities 
which  amuse  and  fascinate  in  the  saloon — instead  of 
the  sterner  qualities  which  command  in  the  forum,  or 
win  immortal  honor  on  the  field.  Many  of  them  were 
debauched — many  utterly  neglectful  of  the  duties  of 
religion  and  patriotism — all  ruinously  extravagant.  The 
life  of  a  court  is  always  a  life  of  expense  ;  and  what 
they  were  forced  to  squander  on  folly  in  Paris,  they  tried 
to  reimburse  by  extortions  in  the  provinces.  They  could 
still  levy  their  cens  and  renles-foncieres  on  the  poor 
landed  proprietors ;  they  could  still  raise  their  tolls 
from  fairs  and  markets  ;  they  could  still  compel  the 
farmers  to  grind  their  corn  at  the  manorial  mill,  and  to 
press  their  grapes  at  the  manorial  wine-press.  But 
along  with  the  heavy  contributions  gathered  from  their 
tenants,  they  reaped  a  bitter  harvest  of  ill-will.  Brilliant 
and  beautiful  personages,  indeed,  they  were.  Not  in 
the  world's  history  have  there  been  more  polished  and 
graceful  men  than  the  old  French  noblesse — vivacious  in 
talk,  seductive  in  manners  ;  but,  alas  !  they  were  nearly 


4i 6  Causes  of  the 

as  useless  as  they  were  polished,  and  as  corrupt  as  they 
were  charming.  It  was  not  from  them  that  either  the 
State  or  society  could  expect  a  regeneration. 

As  for  the  middle  classes,  the  bourgeoisie,  there  were 
some  who — imitating  their  superiors  in  respects  in 
which  they  were  least  worthy  of  imitation — purchasing 
offices  that  they  might  sport  aristocratic  titles  and  affect 
aristocratic  manners,  yet  despised  by  the  aristocracy  for 
their  want  of  blood,  and  hated  by  the  people  for  their 
aspirations  to  rank — had  been  admirably  painted  by 
Moliere,  in  his  Dandin  and  Jourdain.  But  there  were 
others  of  a  very  different  stamp,  who  cared  little  about 
alliances  with  the  "illustrious  house  of  Sotenville,"  or 
the  "eminent  line  of  the  Prudroteries,"  and  pushed  their 
fortune  elsewhere  with  infinitely  greater  effect.  Avail 
ing  themselves  of  the  industrial  spirit,  which  modern 
science  had  awakened,  they  gathered  about  them  the 
most  substantial  tokens  of  success.  They  were  traders, 
manufacturers,  bankers,  and  financiers.  With  wealth 
also  came  offices — not  offices  of  high-sounding  names, 
but  of  the  most  comfortable  emoluments.  The  richest 
intendencies  and  comptrollerships,  and  farmings  of  the 
revenue,  were  theirs ;  while  the  grave  dignities  of  the 
law  were  showered  upon  them,  and  the  schools  opened 
their  doors  to  them,  and  the  rising  power  of  the  literary 
coteries  paid  them  its  court.  For  them  Colbert  and 
Turgot  administered,  and  Montesquieu  wrote,  and  the 
Destouches  and  the  Beaumarchais,  though  they  knew  it 
not,  cracked  their  jokes.  Royalty  was  glad  to  borrow 
their  money  ;  nobility  condescended  to  marry  their 
daughters ;  but,  like  royalty  and  like  nobility,  they  had 
no  bowels  for  the  people,  whence  they  came.  "Though 
the  career  of  the  nobility,"  says  De  Tocqueville,  "and 
that  of  the  middle  classes,  had  differed  widely,  there  was 
one  point  of  resemblance  between  them — both  had 


French  Revolution.  417 

kept   themselves  aloof  from    the   people.     Instead    of 
uniting    with    the    peasantry,   the    middle    classes  had 
shrunk  from  the  contact ;    instead  of  joining  with  them 
to  combat  injustice,  they  had  only  sought  to  aggravate 
injustice — they  had  been  as  eager  for  exceptional  rights 
as  the  nobility  for  privileges.      Themselves  sprung  from 
the  ranks  of  the  peasantry,  they  had  so  lost  all  recol 
lection  and  knowledge  of  their  former  character,  that  it 
was  not  until  'they  had  armed  the  peasants,  that  they 
perceived  they  had  roused  passions  which  they  could 
neither  gauge,  guide,  nor  restrain,   and  of  which  they 
were  destined  to  be  the  victims,  as  well  as  the  authors." 
Meanwhile,  what  was  the  condition  of  the  people — 
that  goose  whom  all  the  others  plucked?     What  has 
been,  what  is,  the  condition  of  the  people  everywhere, 
except  in  the  democracies,  and   sometimes  in  them  ? 
Ignorance,   suffering,    wrong,    and  despair  !     But   the 
French  peasant,  alas  !  was  the  most  abused  of  all  people. 
He  vegetated,    without  guidance,   in  his   misery,   save 
from  a  Church,  which,    though  adorned    by  the  most 
accomplished  prelates,    and   the   most    laborious    and 
kind-hearted  cures,   was   stained  by  remembrances  of 
St.  Bartholomew  and    the  dragonnades.      Our   author 
has   drawn  a  fearful  picture    of    the   various    obstruc 
tions  by  which   the  movements   of  the    people    were 
resisted,    and  of  the  oppressions  by  which   they  were 
overborne  ;  but  fearful    as  it   is,  it  is  yet   incomplete. 
No  passion  was  stronger  in  the  heart  of  a  rural  French 
man  than  his  passion  for  land — for  some  little  corner 
of  the  earth  which   he   might  call    his   own.      But  in 
order  to  buy  his  land,  supposing  him  to  have  inherited 
or  amassed  money  enough  to  do  so,  he  must  pay  a  tax 
on  the  purchase — not  to  the  government,  but  to  one  of 
his  neighbors,  who  owned  what  was  called  the  cens,  or 
perpetual  rent.     When  he  is  about  to  put  in  the  seed, 
18* 


41 8  Causes  of  the 

he  may  be  summond  to  the  corvee,  or  to  enforced  labor 
upon  his  neighbor's  land,  or  on  the  highway.  If  his 
seed  be  put  in,  and  the  harvest  come,  his  neighbor's 
horses  and  hounds  will  trample  it  in  pursuit  of  game, 
which  he  himself  has  no  right  to  take.  The  remnani 
reaped,  he  carries  it  to  market,  paying  a  toll  on  the 
road,  a  toll  on  the  bridge,  a  toll  at  the  barriers  of  his 
province,  and  a  toll  at  the  market-place.  He  returns  to 
his  home,  where  he  would  consume  the  "surplus  of  his 
produce  in  his  family  ;  but  he  finds  that  he  must  take 
the  grain  to  the  mill  of  his  neighbor  to  be  ground,  and 
the  flour  to  the  oven  of  his  neighbor  to  be  baked  ;  and 
then  the  tax-collectors  will  call  upon  him  for  a  twentieth 
or  a  tenth  of  it  in  value,  for  the  dues  of  the  govern 
ment  ;  and  the  Church  will  exact  its  dues,  and  for  every 
moment  that  he  withholds  the  amount,  legal  charges 
attach  and  accumulate,  till  the  land  itself  is  scarcely 
worth  the  claims  against  it.  "  Picture,  if  you  can,"  says 
De  Tocqueville,  "  the  condition,  the  wants,  the  charac 
ter,  the  passions  of  such  a  man,  and  estimate  the  store 
of  env)  and  hatred  he  is  laying  up  in  his  heart !" 

What  aggravated  the  sense  of  wrong  under  these  mul 
tiplied  burdens,  was  the  perception  that  the  kings  were 
squandering  millions  upon  idle  wars,  debauched  favor 
ites,  and  insolent  courtezans.  The  conquests  of  the 
Grand  Monarque  had  ended  in  financial,  embarrass 
ments,  which  no  subtlety  of  Mazarin,  no  skill  of  Col 
bert  could  avert ;  the  orgies  of  the  Regency  had'turned 
the  world  of  commerce  into  a  gambling-house,  and  the 
world  of  fashion  into  a  bagnio  :  the  reign  of  Louis  XV. 
was  ridiculed  by  his  fellow-monarchs  even,  as  the  reign 
of  the  petticoats,  under  which  the  licentious  atrocities 
of  the  pare  auoc  cerfs  surpassed  the  atrocities  of  the  grot 
toes  of  Capri.  For  more  than  half  a  century,  the  State 
had  writhed  and  tossed  with  disorders  of  finance,  impos- 


French  Revolution.  419 

sible  to  heal.  Neither  exactions  nor  arbitrary  taxes, 
which  only  iritated  the  more — nor  secret  bankruptcies 
and  confiscations,  which  only  disaffected  the  more — nor 
yet  the  sale  of  offices  and  the  substitution  of  paper  for 
gold,  which  only  intoxicated  the  more,  could  stop  the 
ravages  of  the  great  cancerous  deficit.  All  the  wisest 
doctors  of  the  purse,  from  Sully  to  Necker,  had  been 
employed  on  that  disease,  with  partial  reliefs  ending  in 
permanent  aggravations.  What  were  the  labors  of  the 
Danaides,  drawing  water  in  sieves,  to  those  of  a  French 
minister?  The  problem  was,  out  of  nothing  and  less, 
to  extract  much — and  desperate  were  the  attempts  at  the 
solution.  Yet  the  gay  creatures  of  the  court — repre 
sented  in  the  one  sex  by  an  Abbe  Dubois,  and  in  the 
other  by  Pompadour — went  on  singing,  arid  dancing, 
and  eating  their  "pleasant  little  suppers  in  pleasant  little 
mansions," — as  Rochefoucault  names  them,  "conse 
crated  to  Cupid  and  his  mother,  and  more  enchanting 
than  Paphos  or  Idalia," — as  carelessly  as  the  Pompeians 
may  be  supposed  to  have  feasted  on  that  sickly  night, 
when  a  sulphurous  cloud  suddenly  enveloped  the  hill 
side  of  Vesuvius. 

All  the  while  that  French  society  was  undergoing  the 
slow  but  certain  process  of  decomposition,  there  was  one 
solid  and  enduring  power  growing  up — the  power  of 
the  Pen — which  was  but  another  name  for  that  of 
Opinion.  It  is  common  to  class  the  writers  of  that 
age  under  the  general  term  of  philosophes,  but  they 
were  as  multitudinous  in  their  kinds  almost  as  the  stars 
of  the  sky,  and  they  agreed  only  in  the  determination 
to  reduce  everything  to  its  naked  elementary  principles. 
Voltaire,  the  Mephistopheles,  led  on  his  glittering  rab 
ble  of  wits  and  epigrammatists  ;  Montesquieu  command 
ed  the  firmer  cohorts  of  the  publicists,  and  Rousseau, 
from  his  solitude,  swayed  the  pathetic  bands  of  senti- 


420  Causes  of  the 

mentalists  and  dreamers.  Thw  railed  and  scoffed, 
they  reasoned  and  declaimed,  they  cracked  jokes  and 
enacted  plays,  laughing  and  weeping  all  to  one  end— 
the  subversion  of  that  world  of  complicated  and  stupid 
traditional  privileges  which  harassed  society.  As  we 
read  it,  at  this  day,  the  greater  part  of  that  motley  litera 
ture  seems  quite  inadequate  to  the  effects  it  produced  ; 
but  that  is  because  we  read  it  without  feeling  the 
deeper  spirit  out  of  which  it  sprang.  Much  of  it  is 
shallow  ;  much  of  it  wanton — a  mere  windy  and  bril 
liant  schaum-wesen  or  foam  ;  and  all  of  it  skeptical  ;  yet 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  skepticism  and  wantonness, 
like  the  shallowness  and  glitter,  are  on  the  surface, 
while  there  is  a  soul  within  its  soul,  a  depth  beyond  its 
depth,  in  the  whole  spirit  of  the  age  which  it  represented. 
Beneath  the  bubbles  and  froth  of  the  stream,  swept  a 
mighty  under-current  of  earnest  thought  and  passionate 
enthusiasm.  Voltaire  was  a  scoffer  and  a  trifler,  but 
any  one  who  will  read  his  letters  on  the  cases  of  Galas 
and  others,  will  see  that  he  could  be,  also,  a  fanatic 
for  liberty.  Like  him,  the  age  scoffed  and  trifled,  but 
its  heart  was  fearfully  in  earnest.  What  everybody  felt, 
what  each  one  tried  to  express,  in  his  way — in  puns 
and  plays,  as  in  profound  dissertations — was,  that  right 
was  greater  than  might — that  nature  was  better  than 
convention — that  reason  was  superior  to  authority — and 
that  institutions  were  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for 
institutions.  Superficial,  quotha,  but  could  there  have 
been  grander  or  profounder  thoughts  than  these  ?  Had 
not  the  world  travailed  with  them  since  the  advent  of 
Christ  ?  Had  not  martyrs  died,  and  heroes  fought,  and 
all  the  wise,  and  good,  and  gentle  souls  of  the  earth 
struggled  for  these,  as  of  the  very  essence  of  the  gospel  ? 
And  now,  after  eighteen  hundred  years,  in  dim,  con 
fused  shapes,  but  veritably,  they  had  got  possession  of  a 


French  Revolution.  421 

whole  people — of  a  people  wretched,  yet  gallant,  ex 
citable  by  mere  impulses  to  transports  of  ferocity — 
"more  capable  of  heroism  than  of  virtue,  fuller  of 
genius  than  good  sense" — suspicious  and  generous,  vain 
and  self-sacrificing  alike,  and  thoroughly  persuaded,  as 
Carlyle  says,  that  nothing  stood  between  them  and  a 
golden  age  but  a  few  traitors.  That  people  arose,  and 
it  was  the  Revolution  !  It  arose,  not  in  its  wrath  at 
first,  but  with  a  calm,  sublime  energy.  All  ranks,  each 
individual,  appeared  to  be  animated  by  a  generous  love 
of  reform  ;  but  the  obstructions  were  as  inveterate  as 
they  were  numerous  to  fret  it  into  impatience.  The  lead 
ers  of  every  party  were  incompetent,  none  knowing 
what  he  wished,  or  how  to  accomplish  it  when  he  did 
know.  The  king  was  amiable,  but  weak,  the  nobles  bet 
ter  courtiers  than  chiefs,  and  the  republicans  rhetors 
who  had  learned  their  phrases  out  of  the  annals  of 
'  Greece  and  Rome.  Of  the  men  that  early  assumed  the 
command,  the  best  hearts  among  them,  like  Lafayette  and 
the  Girondists,  had  very  little  head,  and  the  best  heads, 
like  Mirabeau  and  Danton,  had  corrupt  hearts.  They 
could  not  act  together,  and  there  was  no  positive  doc 
trine  capable  of  crystallizing  the  molten  metal  into  form. 

The  Revolution  came,  and  it  came,  as  alone  it  could 
come,  after  such  antecedents,  in  anarchy  and  blood 
shed, — a  hideous  outbreak  of  vengeance  ;  a  wild  frenzy 
of  alternate  hope  and  despair ;  purging,  consuming, 
desolating  ;  but,  like  a  tropical  tornado,  which,  if  it 
sweeps  everything  before  it,  levels  also  the  jungles  in 
which  the  wild  beasts  have  taken  refuge,  and  cleanses 
the  deadly  pest-bearing  air. 

But  of  the  conduct  of  the  Revolution  and  its  results, 
we  may,  perhaps,  have  an  opportunity  to  speak  when 
our  author  shall  have  presented  the  second  volume 
which  he  promises  on  this  subject. 


MOTLEY'S    RISE   OF   THE   DUTCH 
REPUBLIC* 

|R.  MOTLEY  has  chosen,  for  his  debut  on  the 
historic  stage,  one  of  the  most  significant  epi 
sodes  in  the  whole  of  the  early  struggles  of  the 
modern  era.  The  revolt  of  the  Netherlands  against 
the  political  and  ecclesiastical  domination  of  Spain,  was 
a  part  of  that  great  contest  carried  on  throughout  the 
sixteenth  century,  between  the  Teutonic  Protestant  na 
tions,  with  their  decided  tendency  to  intellectual  free 
dom  and  territorial  division,  and  the  Romanic  Catholic 
nations,  with  their  no  less  decided  bias  toward  intel 
lectual  acquiescence  and  the  unity  of  government.  We 
may  pronounce  it  the  most  pregnant  part  of  this  con 
test.  All  the  influences  of  race,  politics,  and  religion, 
which  came  in  conflict  in  the  general  movements  of  the 
age,  were  concentrated  in  these  lesser  conflicts.  The 
encounters  that  took  place  on  the  spongy  sands  and 
amid  the  watery  dykes  of  the  Low  Countries,  rehearsed 
in  little  that  gigantic  drama  of  war  and  bloodshed, 
which,  a  few  years  later,  convulsed  the  entire  continent. 
It  is  this  fact  which  lends  to  the  Dutch  war  its  high 
importance  in  world-history.  Had  it  been  simply  the 
wrestle  of  a  few  oppressed  provinces  against  a  power- 

*  The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic.      A  History.      By  JOHN  LOTHROP 
MOTLEY.      3  vols.      Harper  &  Brothers,  1856. 
From  Putnam's  Monthly ,  June,  1856. 


Motley  s  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic.    423 

ful  invader,  we  might  find  for  it  many  a  parallel.  But 
it  was  a  great  deal  more  than  that  :  it  was  a  direct  and 
desperate  grapple  between  the  fellest  oppositions  of 
the  time,  animated  by  its  profoundest  animosities, 
and  big  with  magnificent  or  disastrous  results,  Ever 
since  the  accession  of  Charles  V.  to  the  crowns  of  Spain 
and  the  Empire,  the  real  and  pervading  issue  of  Europe 
lay  in  the  necessary  antagonism  of  the  principles  of 
unity  and  absolutism  in  Church  and  State,  and  the  prin 
ciples  of  national  independence,  and  civil  and  moral 
freedom.  The  former  were  asserted  by  the  splendid 
monarchy  of  Spain,  linked  in  with  the  religious  hie 
rarchy  of  Rome,  while  the  latter  found  their  chief  ad 
herents  among  the  distracted  northern  States  of  Germany, 
and  the  no  less  distracted  commercial  provinces  of  the 
Netherlands.  Charles  V.,  and,  subsequently,  Philip 
II.,  who  inherited  his  policy,  if  not  his  wisdom,  in 
seeking  the  formation  of  a  great  State  which  should 
possess  a  common  government,  and  a  common  reli 
gion,  encountered  their  most  formidable  obstacles  in 
the  spirit  which  had  been  growing  for  centuries,  of  na 
tional  independence,  intellectual  culture,  commercial 
activity,  and  religious  freedom.  In  Germany,  the  in 
tellectual  and  moral  elements  of  this  opposition  were  the 
strongest,  and  came  to  a  head  earlier  in  the  outbreak  of 
Luther  ;  but  in  the  Netherlands,  the  national  and  com 
mercial  element  prevailed,  and  was  some  time  longer 
in  ripening.  But  wherever  these  principles  clashed, 
the  shock  was  deadly  and  fearful,  and  nowhere  more  so 
than  in  the  Netherlands,  because  nowhere  were  the  an 
tagonisms  more  direct,  universal,  and  inveterate. 

The  people  of  the  Netherlands,  mainly  descended 
from  the  old  Batavian  and  Belgic  races,  who,  overcome 
by  the  superior  forces  of  the  Romans,  had  contributed, 
for  four  centuries,  the  most  effective  arm  to  the  legions 


424  Motley  s  Rise  of  the 

of  their  conquerors,  were  earlier  than  the  rest  of  Europe 
emancipated  from  the  serfdom  of  the  middle  ages. 
Their  favorable  position  on  the  north  seas,  and  on  the 
shores  of  navigable  streams,  outlets  to  the  continent, 
gathering  them  into  towns,  had  led  them  to  a  profitable 
commerce,  and  to  a  most  flourishing  external  and  po 
litical  condition.  The  affluence  flowing  in  upon  them 
from  east  and  west,  attracted  population,  fostered  arts, 
enlivened  society,  and  developed,  while  it  fortified,  the 
sense  of  individual  dignity  and  worth.  Along  with 
growing  trade,  a  growing  independence,  intrenched  be 
hind  municipal  privileges,  inured  them  to  self-trust  and 
free  exertion.  As  early  as  the  eleventh  and  twelfth 
centuries,  the  power  of  the  sovereign  in  the  Nether 
lands  was  strictly  limited  by  the  power  of  the  estates, 
in  which  the  trades,  as  well  as  the  nobility,  were  repre 
sented.  Without  their  consent,  no  law  could  be  en 
acted,  no  war  undertaken,  no  tax  imposed,  no  change 
in  the  currency  effected,  and  no  foreigner  allowed  to 
take  part  in  the  government.  Even  under  the  rule  of 
the  powerful  Dukes  of  Burgundy,  who  sought  to  re 
duce  them  to  subjection,  this  substantial  liberty  had 
been  maintained.  At  a  later  day,  when  the  Emperor 
Maximilian,  backed  by  all  the  might  of  the  Roman 
German  empire,  endeavored  to  inflict  extraordinary 
taxes  upon  them,  and  to  quarter  his  troops  in  the  prov 
inces,  they  instantly  flew  to  arms,  and  made  no  scruple 
of  seizing  his  person,  and  confining  him  until  they  had 
extorted  satisfactory  assurances  of  future  security.  They 
were  republicans  in  spirit,  if  not  in  name.  They 
prized  that  sturdy  burgher  independence  which  had 
made  them  what  they  were,  and,  at  a  time  of  almost 
universal  war  and  universal  abjectness,  had  not  only 
raised  their  cities  into  cities  of  opulence,  but  had  made 
them,  also,  cities  of  refuge  for  the  world. 


Dutch  Republic.  426 

Under  these  circumstances,  the  transition  from  civil 
to  religious  freedom  was  not  difficult.  At  the  on 
coming  of  the  Reformation,  the  Netherlanders  were 
nominally  Catholics  ;  but  nowhere  were  the  new  doc 
trines  more  gratefully  welcomed  than  among  them, 
or  more  rapidly  spread.  Introduced  through  a  thou 
sand  channels — by  the  Protestant  traders  of  Germany, 
by  the  English  and  French  fugitives  from  persecution, 
by  their  own  children  educated  at  Geneva,  by  the  Swiss 
mercenaries  of  the  Emperor,  even — they  speedily  dif 
fused  themselves  over  the  land,  like  the  waters  of  the 
sea  when  one  of  their  dykes  had  broken.  A  hard 
working  people,  they  had  little  respect  for  the  luxurious 
indolence  of  the  monks ;  and  a  plain,  simple-hearted 
people,  they  were  more  attracted  by  the  intellectual 
charms  of  doctrine  than  by  the  sensuous  splendors  of 
ritual. 

The  Spanish  nation,  on  the  other  hand,  by  nature 
arrogant,  and  by  training  superstitious,  was  the  willing 
slave  of  a  double  despotism,  of  a  mighty  but  oppres 
sive  monarchy,  and  of  an  imposing  but  subtle  and  self 
ish  ecclesiasticism.  Its  recent  conquest  of  Granada 
had  rekindled  its  enthusiasm  to  the  fiery  pitch  of  the 
crusades ;  its  discovery  of  the  New  World  had  given  a 
vent  to  the  most  romantic  spirit  of  adventure,  as  well 
as  to  the  most  ferocious  cupidity  ;  while  the  magnifi 
cent  extent  of  its  dominion  filled  it  with  unbounded 
audacity  and  pride.  Every  incident  in  the  events  of 
the  time  conspired  to  raise  in  the  mind  of  the  Spaniard 
the  dangerous  consciousness  of  his  greatness.  Master 
of  half  of  Europe,  and  of  nearly  all  America,  with  pos 
sessions  in  Africa,  in  Asia,  and  among  the  rich  Spice 
Islands  of  the  Indian  seas,  the  favorite  of  the  Holy 
Pontiff,  the  assumed  vicegerent  of  Christ,  and  the 
spiritual  guide  of  a  hundred  million  souls,  the  Spaniard 


426  Motley  s   Rise  of  the 

seemed  to  himself  to  hold  the  keys  of  all  the  treasures 
of  earth,  and  of  all  the  glories  of  Heaven.    ~"  He  was  the 
man  of  the  Lord,  and  the  lord  of  man  ;"  he  had  fused 
the  powerful  kingdoms  of  the  peninsula  into  a  single 
more  powerful  kingdom  ;    he  had  driven  the  Saracen 
from  Europe  in  the  midst  of  a  sanguinary  resistance  ; 
he  had  been  victorious  over  France  ;  he  had  ravaged 
Italy  ;    and  he   had  despoiled  a  new  continent  of  its 
wealth.       His  statesmen  were  the  ablest  that  had  ap 
peared  since  the  most  flourishing  days  of  Greece,  and 
his   soldiers  the   bravest  that   had   appeared   since  the 
most  flourishing  days  of  Rome.      His  soldiers,  indeed, 
were  brave  with  more  than  Roman  bravery.      To  the 
animal  courage  and  national  ambition  of  the  Roman, 
they  added  the  romantic  valor  of  chivalry  and  the  im 
pulsive  zeal  as  well  as  the  stoical  endurance  of  religion. 
It  was  not  surprising,  then,  that  the  Spaniard  should 
pride   himself  on  his  superiority  among  the   nations; 
yet  he  valued  the  steadfastness  which  had  distinguished 
his  faith,  and  rendered  him  its  elected  champion,  more 
than  the  triumph  of  his  arms  or  the  seductions  of  his 
policy.     At  a  time  when  the  people  everywhere  were 
falling  away  from  the  ancient  Church,  like  leaves  from 
a  smitten   tree— when    Germany.    Holland,    England, 
France,  Sweden,  and  Switzerland  were  stirred  to  their 
depths  by   religious   schism,    and   even    Italy   was    re 
tained  in  the  fold  of  the  faithful  only  by  the  profound 
craft  of  a  milder  and  more  liberal  policy  on  the  part  of 
Rome — the  Spaniard  remained  unaffected.      The  only 
result  of  the  agitation,  so  far  as  man  could  see,  had  been 
to  induce  him  to  draw  tighter  the  bands  of  intolerance, 
and  to  heap  fresh  fuel  upon  the  fires  of  the  inquisition. 
"Times  of  refreshing,"  says  Macaulay,  describing  this 
period,   "came  to  all  neighboring  countries;  but  one 
people  alone  remained,  like  the  fleece  of  the  Hebrew 


Dutch  Republic.  '  427 

warrior,  dry  in  the  midst  of  that  benignant  and  fer 
tilizing  dew.  Among  the  men  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
the  Spaniard  was  the  man  of  the  fifteenth  century,  or 
of  a  still  darker  period — delighted  to  behold  an  Auto  da 
Fe,  or  ready  to  volunteer  on  a  crusade." 

It  was  the  mistake  of  Philip  II.,  when  he  came  to 
reign  over  these  two  peoples,  more  remote  from  each 
other  in  their  spiritual  affinities  than  in  their  local  posi 
tions,  to  suppose  that  he  could  transfer  the  institutions 
of  the  one  to  the  soil  of  the  other,  and  change,  by 
a  stroke  of  a  pen  the  inwrought  results  of  centuries. 
Receiving  the  Provinces  at  the  moment  of  their  highest 
bloom,  when  they  contained  more  flourishing  towns 
than  there  were  days  in  the  year,  when  the  revenues 
exacted  from  them  were  more  copious  than  all  the 
mines  of  South  America,  when  the  temper  of  the  people, 
made  moderate  by  plenty  and  content,  was  remarkably 
placable,  nothing  would  have  been  easier  for  him  than 
to  retain  their  allegiance.  He  had  only,  like  a  wise 
statesman,  to  adapt  his  measures  to  the  exigences  of  the 
situation.  But  Philip  was  not  a  statesman.  A  Spaniard 
of  the  Spaniards,  with  the  worst  traits  of  his  nation 
aggravated  by  the  gloomy,  monkish  education  he  had 
received — dark,  revengeful,  and  superstitious,  without 
one  generous  sentiment  or  a  single  noble  ambition — he 
had  conceived  an  ideal  of  government  better  fitted  to 
the  satrapies  of  an  oriental  tyrant  than  to  the  court  of  a 
Christian  monarch.  His  father,  Charles  V.,  though 
scarcely  less  a  despot  in  action  than  he,  was  a  despot 
who  had  tempered  his  rule  by  friendly  concessions,  and 
dazed  the  sense  of  his  wrongs  by  a  blaze  of  brilliant  ex 
ploits.  Born  among  the  Flemings,  he  had  surrounded 
his  person  with  Flemings  ;  and  the  Flemings  received 
some  of  the  reflected  lustre  of  his  glory.  He  was  ar 
bitrary,  but  arbitrary  from  policy,  and  not,  as  Philip 


428  Motley  s  Rise  of  the 

was,  from  preference.  Narrowness,  bigotry,  and  hatred 
were  the  inborn  qualities  of  the  son,  who  had  achieved 
no  great  deeds  to  awaken  admiration,  and  exhibited 
no  tenderness  to  conciliate  love.  Distrusted  and  dis 
liked  by  his  northern  subjects,  from  the  very  hour  when, 
a  young  man,  he  had  showed  himself  reserved  and 
haughty  amid  the  genial  festivities  of  the  celebrated  ab 
dication,  he  returned  their  aversion  with  a  double 
venom.  He  never  comprehended  the  sturdy  citizen- 
independence  of  those  prosperous  burghers.  He  never 
sympathized  in  their  pursuits,  nor  admired  their  lowly 
citizen-like  virtues.  He  was  impatient  of  their  tradi 
tional  privileges  ;  he  was  piqued  by  their  boasts  of  free 
dom  ;  he  was  jealous  of  those  among  their  nobles  whom 
he  did  not  despise,  and  he  scorned  their  seeming  feeble 
ness.  Had  they  never  aroused  his  deep  religious  enmi 
ties,  they  would  not  have  been  his  favorites  ;  but  when 
they  gave  an  eager  entrance  to  the  Reformation,  when,  in 
the  natural  over-action  of  a  new  movement,  long  sup 
pressed,  their  rabble  broke  the  images  of  his  saints,  and 
scattered  the  sacred  relics  of  his  sanctuaries,  they  were, 
from  the  instant,  doomed  to  an  unheard-of  vengeance. 

They  were  doomed,  however,  not  in  a  frenzy  of  ex 
asperation,  not  in  the  heat  of  outraged  prejudices  nor 
in  a  sudden  burst  of  unreasoning  resentment,  but 
with  slow,  cold,  calculating,  subtle,  and  implacable 
malignity.  For  with  Philip  the  name  of  heretic  was 
a  synonym  of  miscreant,  wretch,  criminal,  outcast,  or 
whatever  else  is  odious  to  man  and  abandoned  of 
God.  The  inhuman  theology  of  the  time  he  sincerely 
believed,  and  he  was  prepared  to  enforce  its  remorseless 
sanctions  with  all  the  cowled  treacheries  of  the  inqui 
sition,  and  all  the  crushing  energies  of  the  first  of  States. 
Active  in  brain,  but  inactive  in  body,  his  movements 
were  wily,  rather  than  impetuous ;  but  whether  slow  or 


Dutch  Republic.  429 

swift,  he  contrived  that  they  should  be  fatal  If  he 
hastened  his  purposes,  it  was  only  to  anticipate  the 
chances  of  possible  escape  ;  and  when  he  tarried  in 
them,  it  was  only  to  render  the  means  more  sure,  and 
the  execution  final.  They  who  read  the  memoirs 
always  think  of  him,  as  he  sat  amid  the  schemes  of  his 
far-reaching  empire,  as  of  some  sullen  and  gigantic 
spider  in  the  midst  of  his  web,  entrapping  his  poor  vic 
tims  on  every  hand,  and  darting  forth  only  when  their 
struggles  threaten  to  break  through  his  infernal  meshes. 
The  agents  whom  Philip  selected  for  the  execution 
of  his  vengeance  upon  the  offending  Netherlands,  were 
fit  implements  of  his  double  nature,  as  a  churchman 
and  a  king.  They  were  first  the  Cardinal  Granville,  and 
afterward  the  Duke  of  Alva — the  one  as  subtle  an 
ecclesiastic  as  ever  concealed  the  rancors  of  hell  beneath 
the  smiles  of  heaven,  and  the  other  as  inflexible  a  sol 
dier  as  ever  stalked  through  rivers  of  blood  to  do  a 
master's  will.  Granville,  whose  real  name  was  Anthony 
Peronet,  was  a  Frenchman  by  birth,  and  had  taken  his 
first  lessons  in  state-craft  under  Charles  V.,  as  his  deputy 
at  the  Council  of  Trent.  He  had  served  the  Emperor, 
also,  in  subsequent  negotiations,  and  had  had  the  adroit 
ness  to  get  himself  retained  in  the  service  of  the  son. 
Secretary  to  Margaret  of  Parma,  the  nominal  regent  of 
the  Netherlands,  he  speedily  made  himself  the  real  re 
gent.  To  a  mind  of  rare  penetration  and  comprehen 
siveness,  he  united  great  learning,  great  diligence,  great 
patience,  and  the  most  remarkable  acuteness  in  devising 
as  well  as  unravelling  plots.  Always  at  his  post,  he  was 
always  prepared  for  events.  Penetrating  the  depth  of 
his  master's  mind,  he  apprehended  his  wishes  almost  be 
fore  they  were  formed.  He  carried  them  into  effect  with 
a  graceful  audacity,  which  flattered  the  imperial  self-love 
without  surprising  his  vanity.  Devoted  to  the  throne, 


430  Motley 's  Rise  of  the 

more  even  than  to  the  Church,  fertile  in  expedients,  in 
defatigable  in  labor,  and  of  polished  and  insinuating 
manners,  he  grew  the  indispensable  confidant  of  Philip. 
But  he  was  more  solicitous  in  gaining  the  friendship 
of  his  sovereign,  than  he  was  successful  in  appeasing 
the  discontents  of  the  subject.  All  the  acts  of  the  gov 
ernment  being  charged  to  him,  he  became  an  intoler 
able  offence  to  the  nobles  as  well  as  to  the  people.  It  was 
only  after  much  delay,  with  great  reluctance  on  the  part 
of  the  king,  and  not  until  he  had  sowed  the  seeds  of 
irreconcilable  divisions,  that  he  was  compelled  to  retire 
before  the  storm  which  they  raised  against  him.  As  a 
foreigner,  his  very  existence  as  an  official  was  a  viola 
tion  of  the  ancient  constitution.  Surrounding  himself 
with  foreigners,  besides,  he  had  repulsed  the  entire 
body  of  the  native  aristocracy.  Retaining  an  extraor 
dinary  force  of  Spanish  troops  in  the  country,  he  had 
to  bear  the  brunt  of  their  repeated  misconduct.  Quar 
tering  a  multitude  of  new  bishops  on  the  dioceses,  he 
had  offended  religious  prejudices  and  increased  the 
taxes  ;  and  favoring  secretly  the  processes  of  the  inqui 
sition,  he  had  alarmed  the  suspicions  and  fears  of  the 
people,  through  whom  the  very  name  of  that  tribunal 
sent  a  thrill  of  horror.  Philip  had  dallied  and  equivo 
cated  in  regard  to  his  removal,  until  the  discontents 
were  spread  through  all  classes  of  the  nobility,  and 
down  even  among  the  lowest  ranks  of  the  populace.  A 
timelier  intervention  might  have  relieved  this  state  of 
affairs ;  but,  on  the  recall  of  Granville,  matters  had 
gone  so  far  that  the  slight  concessions  announced  but 
whetted  the  rage  for  more.  There  remained  no  alternative 
for  Philip,  but  to  yield  to  an  extent  which  would  have 
damaged  his  supremacy,  or  to  settle  the  difficulties  at 
once  by  the  sword.  True  to  his  nature,  he  made 
choice  of  a  governor,  to  supersede  the  feeble  and  trem- 


Dutch  Republic.  431 

bling  Margaret,  whose  character  alone,  apart  from  the 
enormous  power  with  which  he  was  invested,  would 
have  shown  to  which  side  of  this  alternative  Philip  in 
clined.  The  Duke  of  Alya  was  sent  into  the  Netherlands, 
after  a  pompous  preliminary  parade,  and  at  the  head  of 
ten  thousand  men.  A  person  better  adapted  to  the  execu 
tion  of  Philip's  designs  did  not  then  exist.  He  was  the 
foremost  warrior  of  Europe,  who  had  triumphed  on 
every  field  but  one  ;  and  he  was  as  distinguished  for 
the  asperity  of  his  manners  as  he  was  for  the  intrepidity 
of  his  valor.  "  As  a  man,"  says  Mr.  Motley,  somewhat 
naively,  "  his  character  was  simple.  He  did  not  com 
bine  a  great  variety  of  vices,  but  those  which  he  had 
were  colossal,  and  he  possessed  no  virtues.  He  was 
neither  lustful  nor  intemperate,  but  his  professed  eulo 
gists  admitted  his  enormous  avarice,  while  the  world 
has  agreed  that  such  an  amount  of  stealth  and  ferocity, 
of  patient  vindictiveness  and  universal  bloodthirstiness, 
were  never  found  in  a  savage  beast  of  the  forest,  and 
but  rarely  in  a  human  bosom." 

Inexperienced  as  a  statesman,  and  without  talent, 
save  in  his  profession,  this  soulless,  cast-iron  man  joined 
to  the  methods  of  the  soldier,  which  move  "straight 
forward,  like  a  cannon-ball,"  the  craftier  methods  of 
the  inquisitor.  His  administration,  beginning  with  a 
Judas-like  betrayal  of  Counts  Egmont  and  Horn,  fol 
lowed  by  their  worse  than  Pilate-like  trial  and  execution 
—  murders  almost  unparalleled,  for  the  pathetic  interest 
which  clings  to  the  victims,  and  for  the  reckless  atrocity 
in  the  perpetrators — was  marked  throughout  by  every 
vice  of  tyranny.  Mr.  Motley  has  summed  up  the  re 
sults  in  the  following  terrific,  but  not  exaggerated  pas 
sage  : 

"  The  tens  of  thousands  in  those  miserable  provinces 
who  fell  victims  to  the  gallows,  the  sword,  the  stake,  the 


43 2  Motley  s  Rise  of  the 

living  grave,  or  to  living  banishment,  have  never  been 
counted  ;  for  those  statistics  of  barbarity  are  often  ef 
faced  from  human  record.  Enough,  however,  is  known, 
and  enough  has  been  recited  in  the  preceding  pages. 
No  mode  in  which  human  beings  have  ever  caused 
their  fellow-creatures  to  suffer,  was  omitted  from  daily 
practice.  Men,  women,  and  children,  old  and  young, 
nobles  and  paupers,  opulent  burghers,  hospital  patients, 
lunatics,  dead  bodies,  all  were  indiscriminately  made  to 
furnish  food  for  the  scaffold  and  the  stake.  Men  were 
tortured,  beheaded,  hanged  by  the  neck  and  by  the 
legs,  burned  before  slow  fires,  pinched  to  death  with  red 
hot  tongs,  broken  upon  the  wheel,  starved  and  flayed 
alive.  Their  skins  stripped  from  the  living  body,  were 
stretched  upon  drums,  to  be  beaten  in  the  march  of 
their  brethren  to  the  gallows.  The  bodies  of  many  who 
had  died  a  natural  death  were  exhumed,  and  their  fester 
ing  remains  hanged  upon  the  gibbet,  on  pretext  that 
they  had  died  without  receiving  the  sacrament,  but  in 
reality  that  their  property  might  become  the  legitimate  prey 
of  the  treasury.  Marriages  of  long  standing  were  dis 
solved  by  order  of  government,  that  rich  heiresses  might 
be  married  against  their  will  to  foreigners  whom  they 
abhorred.  Women  and  children  were  executed  for  the 
crime  of  assisting  their  fugitive  husbands  and  parents 
with  a  penny  in  their  utmost  need,  and  even  for  consol 
ing  them  with  a  letter  in  their  exile.  Such  was  the  reg 
ular  course  of  affairs  as  administered  by  the  Blood- 
Council.  The  additional  barbarities  committed  amid 
the  sack  and  ruin  of  those  blazing  and  starving  cities  are 
almost  beyond  belief;  unborn  infants  were  torn  from 
the  living  bodies  of  their  mothers  ;  women  and  chil 
dren  were  violated  by  thousands  ;  and  whole  populations 
burned  and  hacked  to  pieces  by  soldiers  in  every  mode 
which  cruelty,  in  its  wanton  ingenuity,  could  devise." 


Dutch  Republic.  433 

While  we  shudder  at  the  contemplation  of  such  a 
character,  and  are  oppressed  with  fears  lest  his  ruthless 
persecution  should  extinguish  the  innocent  people  of 
the  Netherlands,  we  are  relieved  by  the  appearance  on 
the  scene  of  another  personage.  William,  the  Prince  of 
Orange,  emerging  brightly  from  the  earlier  clouds  of 
these  gloomy  troubles,  grows  more  luminous  and  beau 
tiful  as  the  darkness  thickens  and  disasters  accumulate. 
The  heir  of  a  noble  house,  opulent  and  sumptuous, 
but  refined  and  accomplished  in  all  the  humanities  of  the 
time,  he  comes  before  us,  first  as  the  favorite  of  the 
Emperor  Charles,  whose  hands  rested  upon  his  shoulder 
in  that  imperial  display  at  Brussels,  when,  like  Diocle 
tian,  he  relinquished  the  glories  of  the  crown.  We 
find  him  next  among  the  band  of  stately  nobles  encom 
passing  the  throne  of  Margaret,  who  sought  to  mollify 
the  harsher  edicts  of  the  king,  and  to  guide  her  gov 
ernment  aright.  A  calm,  observant,  indomitable  spirit 
— plastic  enough  to  assume  the  impressions  of  the  mo 
ment,  but  never  so  weak  as  to  sink  under  them — friendly, 
social,  ambitious,  but  self-centred  and  equal  to  any  des 
tiny,  "no  o'ergrowths  of  complexion  breaking  down 
the  pales  and  forts  of  reason,"  William  was  finally  rec 
ognized  by  all  parties  as  the  master  of  the  epoch — by 
his  friends,  who  put  unlimited  trust  in  him,  and  by  his 
enemies,  who  felt  toward  him  a  no  less  unlimited  fear. 
"  He  was  bom,"  as  Schiller  says,  "  to  command  the  re 
spect  and  to  win  the  hearts  of  men."  Less  enthusiastic 
and  wiser  than  either  Egmont  or  Horn,  he  avoided  the 
complicities  into  which  they  fell,  while  his  self-respect 
restrained  him  from  the  orgies  of  Brederode,  and  his 
early  religious  indifference  from  the  fanaticism  of  the 
sectaries. 

But  though  he  did  not  mingle  in  the  turbulent  assem 
blages  of  the  preachers,  nor  echo    the  wild  war-cries  of 
19* 


434  Motley  s  Rise  of  the 

the  Gueux,  he  did  not  less  keenly  feel  the  sufferings  of 
his  country,  nor  less  energetically  resist  the  wrongs 
of  her  oppressor.  By  a  singular  reticence  of  temper, 
which,  in  the  wisdom  of  Polonius's  advice,  ''allowed 
thought  no  tongue,  nor  any  unproportioned  thought 
his  act,"  he  kept  aloof  from  the  popular  ferments,  and 
yet  was  too  impressible  and  generous  to  feel  aloof  from 
the  popular  afflictions.  With  the  unerring  instinct  of 
the  heart,  the  people  everywhere  felt  him  to  be  their 
friend.  They  saw  how  his  earnestness  rose  with  the  oc 
casion,  and  how  his  piety  awoke  and  grew  as  the  woes 
endured  by  others  deepened  before  him.  Thus,  his 
moderation  at  the  outset  had  the  double  effect  of  gaining 
him  a  universal  confidence,  and  of  preparing  him, 
while  others  retired  from  the  combat  exhausted  and 
broken,  to  enter  it  as  if  afresh.  He  protested  and  ap 
pealed,  so  long  as  protests  and  appeals  appeared  to  be 
available  ;  but  when  it  was  seen  that  the  hour  for  these 
was  past,  he  drew  the  sword  and  threw  away  the  scab 
bard.  His  rank,  his  fortune,  his  eloquence,  his  indus 
try,  his  genius,  his  religion,  all  that  he  had,  and  all  that 
he  was,  were  then  given  to  the  cause  with  a  cheerful  and 
unflagging  alacrity.  The  man  to  whom  Philip,  had  he 
been  a  wise  and  good  king,  as  he  was  a  bad  and  foolish 
one,  would  have  committed  the  government  of  his 
provinces,  was  now  become  his  unrelenting  enemy. 
The  man  whom  he  could  not  bribe,  nor  entrap,  nor 
quell,  was  now.  by  the  simple  force  of  principle,  the 
most  formidable  foe  which  his  monarchy  had  yet  en 
countered. 

It  was,  however,  a  long  and  weary  way  that  Orange 
had  to  tread  before  the  world  was  destined  to  reap  the 
fruits  of  his  patriotism  and  virtue — a  way  all  saturated 
in  blood,  encompassed  with  difficulties,  broken  by  vicis 
situdes,  and  ending  at  last  in  his  own  death.  The  im- 


Dittch  Republic.  436 

agination  looks  almost  in  vain  through  history  for  a 
sadder  yet  nobler  figure  than  that  which  William 
presented  during  the  forlorner  periods  of  his  under 
taking.  We  see  the  mate  of  emperors,  the  splendid  and 
wealthy  noble,  accustomed  to  the  shows  of  rank  and  the 
solaces  of  friendship,  having  sacrificed  his  fortune  and 
abandoned  his  home,  stripped  of  his  dignities,  and 
wandering  alone,  almost  penniless,  an  outcast  among 
foreign  nations,  eagerly  soliciting  aid  for  his  country, 
and,  by  superhuman  efforts,  striving  to  organize  an 
army.  As  we  follow  his  painful  career  at  that  crisis,  we 
think  involuntarily  of  that  noble  exile  of  our  own  day, 
who  now  weeps,  deserted,  in  the  streets  of  London,  the 
fallen  fortunes  of  his  dear  Hungary,  and  the  pitiless 
revulsions  of  time.  But  the  peculiarity  of  William's 
position,  unlike  that  of  Kossuth,  was,  that  he  stood 
almost  entirely  alone.  Arrayed  against  the  mightiest 
monarchy  of  the  earth,  there  were  few  who  dared  to 
sympathize  in  his  struggles,  and  none  to  comprehend 
his  designs.  The  reluctant  allies,  whom  he  gained  by 
his  persuasions,  fled  like  sheep  on  the  first  reverses. 
The  soldiers,  whom  he  raised  by  promises,  were  merce 
naries,  whose  demands  he  had  no  money  to  meet.  The 
patriots  who  acted  with  him,  were  headstrong,  violent, 
impatient  of  control;  and  too  often  animated  by  the 
spirit  of  the  freebooter,  rather  than  by  his  own  wise  and 
disinterested  love  of  justice,  they  imitated  the  excesses 
which  had  made  the  Spaniard  hideous.  His  most 
efficient  helpers,  the  adherents  of  the  new  religion,  were 
the  bitter  partisans  of  sect,  and  not,  like  him,  the  cham 
pions  of  universal  tolerance.  Time  and  time  again  was 
he  betrayed  by  the  dissensions  of  Calvinist  and  Lu 
theran  ;  and,  time  and  time  again,  when  his  prospects 
were  at  the  highest,  when  fortune  seemed  to  be  about  to 
float  him  on  the  waves  of  success  to  the  fullest  fruition 


436  Motley  s  Rise  of  the 

of  his  hopes,  some  rashness  of  a  leader,  or  some  insta 
bility  of  the  rabble,  who  were  his  troops,  would  plunge 
him  into  the  abysses  of  helplessness  and  despair. 

It  is  remarkable,  however,  all  through  these  most 
desperate  miscarriages  and  defeats — even  after  that  most 
gigantic  treachery  which  history  records,  when  the  king 
of  France,  having  lured  him  on  by  promises  of  assist 
ance  against  the  Catholics,  consummated  his  plan  on 
the  night  of  St.  Bartholomew,  in  the  blood  of  thirty 
thousand  Huguenots — how  his  soul  retained  its  elasti 
city,  its  courage,  and  its  confidence.  In  his  hours  of 
deepest  distress,  he  did  not  wholly  despond  ;  looking 
calmly  to  the  issue  of  things,  he  estimated  their  tran 
sient  changes  rightly ;  and  while  the  vast  fabric  of  his 
enterprises  was  tumbling  in  ruins  around  him,  and 
carrying  with  it,  to  the  eyes  of  others,  the  fortunes  of 
his  country,  he  trusted  in  the  vitality  of  his  cause,  and 
clung  to  his  faith  in  God.  In  this  far-seeing  firmness, 
this  immovable  constancy  of  purpose,  this  invincible 
superiority  to  the  smaller  as  well  as  larger  persecutions  of 
fate,  he  stood  a  type  of  our  own  Washington,  who  was 
never  so  great  and  triumphant  as  in  those  dark  hours 
when  others  would  have  been  baffled  and  cast  down. 

United  to  this  equanimity  in  adverse  circumstances 
was  a  rare  and  fertile  power  of  combination,  by  which 
he  extracted  success  out  of  failure.  Among  the  many 
skirmishes,  battles,  and  sieges  between  the  Spaniards 
and  the  Netherlanders,  the  former,  owing  to  their  su 
periority  in  every  point  of  discipline  and  effectiveness, 
were  invariably  the  victors,  and  yet  as  invariably  they 
gained  little  by  success. .  Scarcely  had  the  echoes  of 
triumph  died  away,  before  they  were  called  upon  to 
meet  some  new  conjuncture,  which  the  Prince  had  ar 
ranged,  seemingly  more  formidable  than  that  which 
they  had  just  overcome.  In  political  intrigue  as  in 


Dutch  Republic.  437 

military  movements,  he  evinced  this  same  marvellous 
command  of  untoward  events.  When  the  romantic 
Don  John,  the  brilliant  hero  of  Lepanto,  was  sent  to  the 
Low  Countries,  to  recover  by  smiles  what  Alva  had  lost 
by  the  axe  and  the  sword,  nothing  could  have  been  more 
promising  than  the  prospects  opened  to  him,  by  his  gay 
feastings  of  the  men  and  his  gallant  flatteries  of  the 
women.  He  had  only  to  win  the  sombre  William,  to 
render  the  nation  all  his  own.  He  made  the  attempt ; 
he  cajoled,  he  coaxed,  he  wheedled,  he  presented  the 
most  gorgeous  pictures  to  the  ambition  and  selfishness 
of  the  Prince,  and  in  a  little  while  found  himself  hem 
med  in  on  every  side,  deprived  of  his  armies,  abhorred 
by  the  nation,  and  heartily  sick  both  of  the  Nether- 
landers  and  William.  Again,  when  the  Catholic  nobles, 
jealous  of  the  power  of  the  Prince,  invited  the  Arch 
duke  Matthias  of  Austria  to  come  over  and  help  them, 
the  silent  William  consented  :  Matthias  was  made  the 
Governor-General,  and  William  his  lieutenant ;  but  it 
was  soon  remarked  by  everybody,  that  William  was  the 
real  ruler,  and  Matthias  only  his  secretary.  Then, 
in  order  to  retrieve  this  false  move,  the  nobles  invited 
over  the  French  Duke  of  Alen£on,  to  which  William 
also  consented.  When  Alengon  came,  he  was  glad  to 
accept  the  mere  barren  honors  by  which  Orange  neu 
tralized  his  powers  of  mischief,  without  turning  him 
into  an  enemy.  In  fact,  as  a  politician,  \Villiam  had 
no  equal  in  that  day,  and  had  he  possessed  but  half  the 
force  of  his  enemies,  or  had  the  people  for  whose  weal 
he  labored  been  united,  he  might  have  easily  attained 
a  complete  and  final  success.  But  the  materials  with 
which  he  wrought  were  of -the  most  perverse  and  re 
fractory  kind,  and  the  good  which  might  have  been 
achieved  in  five  years,  was  spread  over  a  lifetime. 

We  share  with    Mr.    Motley  his  admiration  of  the 


43$  Motleys  Rise  of  the 

character  of  William  ;  we  regard  him  as  both  a  good 
and  great  man  ;    in  liberality  and  justice  of  sentiment 
he  was  far  in  advance  of  his  age  ;    his  ability  in  the 
management  of  affairs  was  amazing  ;  and  he  was  rightly 
called  the  Father  of  the  People.      But  we  think  that  he 
sometimes  carried  his  policy  of  reserve  to  the  point  of 
dissimulation.     He  clung  to  the  illusion  of  royalty  long 
after  an  abandonment  of  it  would  have  been  justified. 
He  deliberated  when  he  ought   to  have    struck,    and 
sometimes  he  finessed  when  he  should  have  taken  the 
trick.       We   are   aware   of  -the   sinister   and    tortuous 
policy  with  which  he  had  to  contend,  and  how  difficult 
it  is  at  this  day  to  estimate   justly  the  complex   and 
counteracting   influences  of  obscure   events  ;    but   we 
still  feel,  in  spite  of  the  prepossessions  excited  by  Mr. 
Motley's   splendid   advocacy,    that   a   more   impulsive 
quality  of  mind    would   have  assisted  his  efforts,  and 
raised   him  to  a  loftier  niche  of  greatness.     It  would 
be  unfair,  however,  on  this  account,  to  deny  his  exalted 
merits  as  a  statesman.     Through  prodigious  difficulties, 
and    by  unexampled    sacrifices,    he  accomplished    the 
emancipation  of   the  United   Provinces,    and   laid  the 
foundation  of  a  glorious  national  structure.     At  a  time 
when   the   colonies   of    North   America  were  yet   un 
known,  a  half  century  before  the  Puritans  had  landed 
at  Plymouth,  while  Frobisher  was  making  his  second 
voyage,  and  Gilbert  and  Raleigh  were  only  beginning 
to  people  the  new  world,  the  Dutch  Republic,  in  an 
ticipation  of  our  own,  had   "bequeathed  to  the  world 
of  thought  the  great  idea  of  the  toleration  of  all  opin 
ions,  and,  to  the  world  of  action,  the  prolific  principle 
of  federal  union. "     It  is  the  eternal  honor  of  Holland, 
and  of  those  by  whom  her  redemption  was  procured, 
that  she  was  the  first  among  the  modern  nations  to  ex 
emplify  in  practice  a  Christian  State. 


Dutch  Republic.  439 

The  story  of  the  battles  and  sufferings  by  which 
these  events  were  brought  about,  is  told  by  Mr.  Motley 
with  remarkable  animation  and  skill.  Availing  himself 
of  all  the  original  authorities  to  be  found  in  the  various 
archives  of  Belgium  and  Holland,  he  has  constructed  a 
narrative  full  of  interest  and  instruction.  He  paints  the 
confused  scenes  of  the  period  he  has  chosen  to  de 
scribe — its  great  and  little  passions,  its  atrocious  and  its 
noble  men,  its  terrible  sieges  and  picturesque  festivals, 
bridals  in  the  midst  of  massacres,  its  fights  upon  the 
sea  and  under  the  sea,  its  torture-fires  and  blood-baths — 
in  vivid  colors,  with  a  bold,  free  hand,  and  with  a  mas 
terly  knowledge  of  effect.  Whatever  was  dramatic  in 
those  fierce  conflicts  he  has  seized  ;  whatever  is  peculiar 
or  striking  in  character,  he  has  penetrated  ;  whatever  is 
significant  of  time  or  place,  he  appropriates  :  while  he 
has  never  forgotten  the  great  purpose  of  history,  which 
is,  the  illustration  of  moral  power.  It  is  impossible  to 
read  a  page  of  his  book  without  feeling  that  his  mind 
is  one  of  unusual  vigor,  and  that  his  heart  beats  with 
generous  blood.  We  gratefully  welcome  him,  therefore, 
to  the  number  of  our  most  successful  historians. 

Let  us  add,  at  the  same  time,  that  his  work  is  dis 
figured  by  certain  defects,  which  it  would  be  well  to 
correct  in  subsequent  editions.  The  style  is  ambitiously 
rhetorical,  in  many  places,  and  throughout  needs  sim 
plicity.  The  headings  of  the  chapters  are  often  offen 
sively  undignified  and  colloquial.  His  irony,  too,  some 
times  degenerates  into  mere  sneering,  and  his  attempts 
at  humor  are  almost  always  out  of  place.  As  a  whole, 
the  narrative  is  too  diffuse.  A  great  many  needless  epi 
sodes  are  introduced,  and  details  are  given  of  unimpor 
tant  incidents.  Forgetting  the  impartiality  of  the  histo 
rian,  our  author  pleads  the  cause  of  the  Netherlands,  in 
certain  cases,  in  which  he  should  deliver  their  sentence. 


440   Motley  s  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic. 

There  were  occasions,  in  the  course  of  their  struggle, 
when  they  conducted  themselves  with  extreme  meanness, 
as  well  as  atrocity,  and  which  sadly  mar  the  effect  of 
the  heroic  picture  which  Mr.  Motley  seems  anxious  to 
present.  These  he  passes  over  rather  hurriedly,  al 
though  he  omits  no  opportunity  which  is  furnished  him 
for  censuring  the  Spaniards.  In  a  few  historical  allu 
sions,  also  not  falling  directly  within  his  course,  we 
notice  that  he  is  inaccurate.  He  speaks,  for  instance, 
of  Thomas  Muncer  as  a  leader  of  the  anabaptists,  and 
denounces  by  implication  his  personal  character.  Now 
Munzer  (which  is  the  real  name)  was  a  leader  of  the 
peasants,  during  the  peasants'  war  in  Germany  ;  was  in 
no  wise  connected  with  the  anabaptists — who  came  on 
the  scene  ten  years  later  than  he — and  was  a  man  of 
lofty  religious  character.  The  least  agreeable  part  of 
these  volumes  is  the  historic  introduction,  which  smacks 
a  little  of  the  stilted  style  of  Mr.  Carlyle,  the  worst 
model,  perhaps,  both  grammatically  and  rhetorically, 
that  a  young  writer  could  adopt.  Yet  these  are  trivial 
blemishes  in  a  work  of  incomparable  merit,  and  which 
absorbs  the  reader's  attention  from  the  preface  to  the 
close. 


EMERSON    ON    ENGLAND.* 

|HE  position  of  Mr.  Emerson  in  our  literature 
is  so  well-defined  and  established,  that  it  no 
longer  excites  to  controversy.  His  character 
istics,  as  a  thinker  or  writer,  his  peculiar  points  of  view, 
and  his  methods  of  stating  them,  his  keen  insight, 'his 
utter  want  of  logic,  his  limpid,  racy  style,  his  occasional 
obscurities — in  short,  his  merits  and  defects,  whatever 
we  may  think  of  them,  are  known,  and  demand  no 
further  comment.  We  say  that  he  is  Emerson,  and 
have  described  him.  Now  and  then,  a  half-crazy  dys 
peptic,  like  Gilfillan,  fires  off  a  pop-gun  at  him,  but  no 
one  hears  the  report  nor  cares  for  it,  and  the  unconscious 
object  of  it  still  walks  forward  with  his  serene  and  lofty 
smile. 

This  position,  it  is  worthy  of  note,  Emerson  won  soon 
after  his  first  appearance,  and  has  steadily  maintained, 
without  material  increase  or  diminution,  up  to  the  pres 
ent  time.  His  little  book  on  "Nature"  revealed  to 
discerning  minds  all  that  he  has  since  become.  He  is 
to  them  no  greater  now  than  he  was  then.  His  last  and 
seventh  volume  is  no  better  than  his  first.  There  is 
more  richness  and  mellowness  of  style  in  it,  perhaps, 
but  otherwise  it  is  the  same.  Nor  does  this  seeming 

English  Traits.  By  R.  W.  EMERSON.  Boston  :  Phillips,  Sampson 
&  Co.,  1856. 

From  Putnam1 's  Monthly,  Oct.,  1856. 

IQ* 


44  2  Emerson  on  England. 

want  of  growth  argue  any  defect  of  genius.  Goethe 
used  to  say  of  Schiller  that  if  you  separated  from  him 
for  a  week  you  would  be  astonished  on  meeting  him 
again,  by  the  prodigious  strides  in  advance  that  he  had 
made  in  the  interval  ;  but  the  reason  was  that  Schiller 
did  not  begin  as  a  master.  He  presented  himself  as  a 
pupil,  and  you  afterward  saw  the  steps  of  his  progress. 
Mr.  Emerson,  on  the  other  hand,  stepped  into  the  arena 
with  a  native  control  of  his  powers  and  resources.  He 
did  not  have  to  learn  the  use  of  his  tools  by  using  them, 
but  was  born  to  their  use.  His  intellect,  from  the  out 
set,  appeared  so  clear,  so  penetrating,  so  fresh,  so 
capable,  that  it  promised  everything  that  it  has  since 
performed.  It  prepared  us  by  its  immediate  qualities 
against  future  surprises.  Of  every  new  manifestation 
of  it,  we  feel  that  it  is  just  what  we  expected.  Some 
minds  suffer  a  kind  of  ebb  and  flow  in  their  inspirations 
— are  now  dull  and  depressed,  and  then  glowing  with 
life  ;  but  there  are  others  which  possess  a  steady,  per 
manent  action,  like  crystals  which  are  brilliant  in  every 
light,  or  like  stars  which  shine  forever.  Our  author's  is 
of  the  latter  sort. 

In  this  work  on  England,  we  see  Mr.  Emerson  in  a 
new  field  and  in  a  new  atmosphere,  but  it  is  the  same 
Emerson.  His  theme  is  a  much  larger  one  than  he  has 
before  tried,  but  he  treats  it  in  the  old  vein.  What  he 
has  hitherto  done  in  kitcat  and  cabinet  sizes,  he  now 
essays  in  the  broader  historical  style.  The  old  manner 
is,  however,  retained.  The  practical,  concrete  life  of 
England  is  described,  but  it  is  described  from  the  high 
region  of  philosophy.  It  is  painted  (for  Mr.  Emerson 
is  artist  as  well  as  philosopher),  but  it  is  painted  for  the 
thought  rather  than  the  eye.  We  do  not  mean  that 
there  is  any  want  of  color  or  warmth  in  the  picture — in 
fact,  there  is  an  intense  reality  jn  it ;  but  it  is  a  reality 


Emerson  on  England.  443 

for  the  intellect  more  than  for  the  senses,  which  the  brain 
touches  more  than  the  hand. 

John  Bull  has  often  sat  for  his  portrait,  but  never  be 
fore  to  a  limner  so  coldly  clairvoyant  as  this.  Puckler 
Muskau  and  Von  Raumer,  Philarete  Chasles  and 
Bulwer,  to  say  nothing  of  innumerable  lesser  artists — 
Italian,  French,  German,  American,  and  native — have 
attempted  likenesses  of  him,  have  given  us  sketches, 
more  or  less  exact,  of  his  head,  face,  and  looks  ;  but 
here  is  one  who  dissects  him  in  order  to  paint  him;  who 
turns  him  inside  out,  exhibiting  such  bowels  as  he  has, 
and  more  than  that,  trepans  his  brain  for  him  to  show 
what  texture  it  is  of,  and  thrusts  his  hand  into  his  chest 
to  measure  the  power  of  the  life-pulses.  His  country, 
his  origin,  his  achievements  in  enterprise  and  literature 
— his  character  and  religion — his  greatnesses,  which  are 
many,  and  his  littlenesses,  which  are  no  less,  are 
daguerreotyped  with  a  perfectly  free  hand,  and  yet  with 
the  utmost  sincerity. 

Few  men  in  this  country  were  better  qualified,  in 
many  respects,  to  approach  this  subject  than  Mr. 
Emerson.  As  a  scholar  of  wide  and  various  reading, 
familiar  with  the  results  of  all  the  older  civilizations,  he 
was  already  furnished  with  standards  for  a  wise  com 
parative  judgment.  Never  having  been  engaged  in 
actual  life,  whether  political  or  mercantile,  he  was  free 
from  the  prejudices  which  the  details  of  affairs  are  apt 
to  engender.  By  habit  and  training  accustomed  to  the 
formation  of  general  opinions,  seeing  things  in  their 
broader  relations  by  the  pure  light  of  the  intellect,  he 
was  not  liable  to  be  warped  by  his  immediate  obser 
vation,  nor  to  gaze  through  the  discolored  mediums  of 
passion.  At  the  same  time,  a  man  eminent  in  his 
sphere,  he  was  eminently  well  received  abroad.  The 
most  secluded  circles  of  cultivation  were  open  to  him, 


444  Emerson  on  England. 

in  their  friendliest  aspects ;  he  saw  what  he  saw  in  its 
best  guise,  but  he  saw  it  undazzled  by  accessory  splen 
dors  ;  while  he  was  free  to  move,  in  lower  every-day 
walks,  himself  unobserved,  yet  observant  of  all  that  it 
was  pertinent  to  note.  These  were  his  advantages  as  an 
observer ;  but  to  opportunity,  to  sharpness  and  alacrity 
of  vision,  to  susceptibility  and  insight,  he  joined  the 
ability  of  utterance.  A  rare  command  of  the  subtler 
forces  of  language — a  racy,  idiomatic,  sinewy,  yet 
polished  and  graceful  style,  render  his  execution  as 
charming  as  it  is  trenchant  and  impressive. 

But,  it  should  not  be  disguised  that,  in  other  respects, 
Mr.  Emerson  was  not  precisely  the  man  that  the  world 
would  have  chosen  to  take  the  gauge  and  measure  of 
England's  success.  As  an  abstract  philosopher,  more 
profoundly  moved  by  the  deeper  relations  of  thought 
and  sentiment  than  by  the  practical  every-day  life  of 
men,  it  was  to  be  doubted  whether  he  would  seize  the 
peculiar  genius  of  the  most  practical  of  all  the  nations. 
It  was  to  be  feared  that  he  would  dwell  more  upon 
the  inward  springs  and  sources  of  its  character  than 
upon  its  real  achievements.  The  English  people  are 
not  so  much  a  people  of  thoughts  and  sentiments  as  of 
deeds.  They  are  the  most  institutional  people  on  earth, 
and,  to  be  comprehended  rightly,  they  must  be  studied, 
in  their  laws  and  governments  as  well  as  in  their  man 
ners,  literature,  and  religion.  Whether  Mr.  Emerson 
has  studied  them  in  this  wise,  we  shall,  perhaps,  inquire 
in  the  sequel. 

The  problem,  which  our  author  proposes  to  himself, 
after  a  brief  record  of  an  early  visit  to  England,  in 
1833 — during  which  he  saw  Coleridge,  Landor,  Carlyle, 
Wordsworth,  etc. — is,  Why  England  is  England? 
What  are  the  elements  of  that  power  which  the  English 
hold  over  other  nations  ?  If  there  be  one  test  of 


Emerson  on  England.  446 

national  genius,  universally  accepted,  it  is  success ;  and 
if  there  be  one  successful  country  in  the  universe,  for 
the  last  millennium,  that  country  is  England.  What  is 
the  secret  of  it  ? 

This  is  a  broad  question,  and  in  proceeding  to 
answer  it,  Mr.  Emerson  first  glances  at  the  land  itself, 
in  which  there  is  a  singular  combination  of  favorable 
conditions.  The  climate,  neither  hot  nor  cold,  enables 
you  to  work  every  hour  in  the  year.  The  soil  abounds 
in  every  material  for  work,  except  wood — with  coal, 
salt,  tin,  iron,  potter's  clay,  stone,  and  good  arable 
earth.  The  perpetual  rains  keep  the  rivers  full  for  float 
ing  productions  everywhere.  Game  of  every  kind  ani 
mates  the  immense  heaths,  and  the  waters  spawn  with 
fish.  As  an  island,  it  occupies  the  best  stand  ;  for  it  is 
anchored  just  off  the  continent  of  Europe,  and  right  in 
the  heart  of  the  modern  world.  A  better  commercial 
position  is  not  on  the  planet,  affording  shelter  for  any 
number  of  ships,  and  opening  into  the  markets  of 
all  the  world.  As  a  nation,  conveniently  small,  it  is 
disjoined  from  others  so  as  to  breed  a  fierce  nationality, 
and  still  communicates  with  others,  so  that  the  people 
cannot  depress  each  other,  as  by  glut,  but  flow  out  into 
colonies  and  distant  trade,  This  insular  smallness  has 
influenced  the  internal  culture.  For  more  than  a  thou 
sand  years,  the  Englishman  has  been  improving  his 
little  comfortable  farm.  The  fields  have  been  combed 
and  rolled  till  they  appear  to  have  been  finished  "with 
a  pencil  instead  of  a  plough."  Every  rood  of  land 
has  been  turned  to  its  best  uses.  It  is  covered  with 
towns,  cities,  cathedrals,  castl-es,  and  great  and  deco 
rated  estates.  Every  corner  and  crevice  is  stuffed  full, 
like  a  museum ;  every  structure  is  solid,  with  a  look  of 
age,  every  equipage  is  rich  :  the  trades  are  innumerable  ; 
and  the  whole  country  is  a  grand  phalanstery,  where 


446  Emerson  on  England. 

all  that  man  wants  is  provided  within  the  precinct. 
Only  the  skies  are  very  dull,  heavy  with  fog  and  coal- 
smoke — contaminating  the  air  and  corroding  the  monu 
ments  and  buildings. 

Next  to  locality,  Mr.  Emerson  refers  to  the  ques 
tion  of  race.  He  does  not  give  in  to  the  modern 
theory,  so  verbosely  expounded  by  Knox,  and  Count 
de  Gobineau,  of  the  superior  energies  of  the  pure  races, 
but  inclines  to  think  that  composite,  or  mixed  races, 
are  the  best.  "The  simplest  organizations  are  the 
lowest — a  mere  mouth,  or  jelly,  or  straight  worm  ;  but 
as  organizations  become  complex,  the  scale  mounts.  As 
water,  lime,  and  sand  make  mortar,  so  certain  tempera 
ments  marry  well."  The  English,  at  any  rate,  derive 
their  pedigree  from  a  wide  range  of  nationalities.  They 
are  of  the  oldest  blood  of  the  world — of  the  Celtic, 
which  has  an  enduring  productiveness,  and  gave  to  their 
seas  and  mountains  names  which  are  poems  ;*  of  the 
German,  which  the  Romans  found  it  impossible  to  con 
quer,  strong  of  heart  as  of  hand  ;  and  of  the  fighting 
predatory  Norsemen,  who  impart  to  them  animal  vigor, 
prompt  action,  steady  sense,  and  wise  speech,  with  a 
turn  for  homicide — the  composite  result  being  a  hardy, 
strenuous,  enduring,  and  manly  tribe.  Having  all 
these  antagonistic  elements  in  its  veins,  this  tribe  is  full 
of  blood  and  of  brain  ;  full  of  fight  and  of  affection  ; 
of  contemplation  and  practical  skill  ;  of  aggressive 

*  Which  is  only  true  to  a  small  extent.  The  Celts  have  had 
about  as  much  to  do  with  the  destiny  of  England  as  our  Indian  tribes 
have  had  with  that  of  America,  A  few  of  the  names  of  the  streams 
and  mountains  in  England  are  Celtic,  but  the  large  majority  of  all 
the  names  are  Saxon,  at  least  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  out  of  a 
thousand.  Of  ancient  and  pure  Celtic  words  retained  in  our  vocab 
ulary,  only  thirty  are  enumerated,  and  these  relate  principally  to  female 
and  domestic  uses. 


Emerson  on  England.  447 

freedom  and  fixed  law ;  of  enterprise  and  stolidity — 
with  whom  "nothing  can  be  praised  without  damning 
exceptions,  and  nothing  denounced  without  salvos  of 
cordial  praise." 

The  Englishman  of  the  present  day  Mr.  Emerson 
found  a  capital  animal,  well  preserved,  ruddy  in  com 
plexion,  with  voracious  appetite,  and  excellent  diges 
tion  ;  handsome,  when  not  bloated  with  over-feeding ; 
combining  decision  and  nerve  in  the  expression  of  the 
face  ;  devoted  to  bodily  exercise,  to  boxing,  running, 
shooting,  riding,  and  rowing  ;  living  in  the  open  air, 
yet  "  putting  a  solid  bar  of  sleep  between  day  and  day  ;" 
possessed  of  vast  constitutional  energy,  yet  domestic, 
honest,  and  humane.  "The  island  was  renowned  in 
antiquity,"  he  says,  "for  its  breed  of  mastiffs;  so  fierce, 
that  when  their  teeth  were  set,  you  must  cut  their  heads 
off  to  part  them.  The  man  is  like  his  dog.  The  peo 
ple  have  that  nervous  bilious  temperament  which  is 
known  by  medical  men  to  resist  every  means  employed 
to  make  its  possessor  subservient  to  the  will  of  others. 
The  English  game  is  main  force  to  main  force,  the 
planting  of  foot  to  foot,  fair  play  and  open  field  ;  a 
rough  tug,  without  trick  or  dodging,  till  one  or  both 
come  to  pieces." 

From  this  brief  study  of  their  locality  and  origin,  our 
author  turns,  by  a  sudden  transition,  to  a  description 
of  the  present  characteristics  of  England.  His  prin 
cipal  chapters  are  so  many  essays  on  "Manners," 
"Truth,"  "Character,"  "Wealth,"  "Aristocracy," 
' '  Religion, "  ' '  Literature, "  and  the  ' '  Times, " — added  to 
which  is  one  chapter  of  personal  reminiscences.  As 
essays,  they  run  over  with  nice  observation,  sagacious 
remark,  quaint  yet  pertinent  quotation,  the  most  telling 
truths  condensed  in  a  phrase  or  a  metaphor,  dry  humor, 
and  placid  good -nature.  Out  of  every  page,  we  might 


448  Emerson  on  England. 

extract,  for  the  entertainment  of  our  readers,  some 
novel  and  striking  passage,  that  would  contain  either  a 
remarkable  image,  a  pleasant  fancy,  a  stroke  of  wit,  or 
a  profound  principle.  But  we  shall  not  follow  Mr. 
Emerson  through  his  kaleidoscopic  gallery,  where  the 
same  materials  are  ever  presenting  some  new  wonder  of 
form  or  some  new  brilliancy  of  color,  contenting  our 
selves  with  a  few  phrases  descriptive  of  his  general  re 
sults,  which  we  glean  as  we  read. 

Speaking  of  the  hard  manner  of  the  English,  he  says  : 
"A  sea-shell  should  be  the  crest  of  England,  not  only 
because  it  represents  a  power  built  on  the  waves,  but 
also   the    hard    finish    of  the   men.     The  Englishman 
is  finished  like  the  cowry  or  the  murex.     After  the  spire 
and  the  spines  are   formed,   or  with  the  formation,   a 
juice  exudes,  and  a  hard  enamel  varnishes  every  part. 
The  keeping  of  the  proprieties  is  as   indispensable  as 
clean  linen.       No  merit  quite  countervails  the  want  of 
this,  whilst  this  sometimes  stands  in  lieu  of  all.      '  'Tis 
in  bad  taste,'  is  the  most  formidable  word  that  an  Eng 
lishman  can  pronounce.     But  the  japan  costs  them  dear. 
There  is  a  prose    in   certain  of  them,   which    exceeds 
in  wooden  deadness  all  rivalry  with'other  countrymen. 
There  is  a  knell  in  the  conceit  and  externality  of  their 
voice,  which  seems  to  say,  have  all  hope  behind.      In  this 
Gibraltar  of  propriety,  mediocrity  gets  intrenched  and 
consolidated,  and  founded  in  adamant.      An  English 
man  of  fashion  is  like  those  souvenirs  bound  in  gold 
vellum,   enriched  with  delicate   engravings,    fit  for  the 
hands  of  ladies  and   princes,   but  with    nothing    in  it 
worth  reading  and  remembering." 

The  great  vi'rtue  of  Englishmen,  in  Mr.  Emerson's 
estimation,  is  veracity.  They  are  blunt  in  saying  what 
they  think,  sparing  of  promises,  and  require  plain 
dealing  of  others.  Of  old  time,  Alfred,  the  typical 


Emerson  on  England.  449 

Englishman  of  his  day,  was  called  by  his  friend  Asser — 
Aluer  edits  Veridicus — the  truth-speaker.  The  mottoes 
of  the  ancient  families  and  monitory  proverbs,  as  Fare 
fac,  say  do,  of  the  Fairfaxes  ;  say  and  seal,  of  the  house 
of  Fiennes  ;  Vero  nil  verms,  of  the  De  Veres.  The 
phrase  of  the  lowest  people  is  "  honor  bright."  Even 
Lord  Chesterfield,  with  his  French  breeding,  declared 
that  truth  was  the  distinction  of  the  gentleman.  They, 
consequently,  love  reality  in  wealth,  power,  and  hospi 
tality  ;  they  build  of  stone,  and  they  have  a  horror  of 
adventurers.  Connected  with  this  love  of  truth  is  a  cer 
tain  grave  and  heavy  demeanor,  which  disinclines  them 
to  light  recreations.  " //j  s'amusaient  trisiemeni"  said 
old  Froissart,  ' '  selon  le  coulume  de  leur  pays. "  They 
are  very  much  steeped  in  their  temperament,  like  men 
just  awakened  from  deep  sleep.  They  are  of  the 
earth,  earthy ;  and  of  the  sea,  as  the  sea-kinds ;  at 
tached  to  it  for  what  it  yields  them,  and  not  from  any 
sentiment.  They  are  headstrong  believers  and  defend 
ers  of  their  opinion,  and  not  less  resolute  in  maintain 
ing  their  whim  and  perversity.  Their  looks  bespeak  an 
invincible  stoutness.  They  stoutly  carry  into  every  nook 
and  corner  their  turbulent  sense,  leaving  no  lie  uncon- 
tradicted,  no  pretension  unexamined.  The  English 
man  is  a  churl,  with  a  soft  place,  however,  in  his  heart. 
He  says  no,  and  serves  you,  and  your  thanks  disgust 
him.  "  Here  was  lately  a  cross-grained  miser,"  adds 
Mr.  Emerson,  drawing  an  illustration  from  Turner, 
"old  and  ugly,  resembling  in  countenance  the  portrait 
of  Punch,  with  the  laugh  left  out,  rich  by  his  own  in 
dustry,  skulking  in  a  lonely  house,  who  never  gave  a 
dinner  to  any  man,  and  disdained  all  courtesies,  yet  as 
true  a  worshipper  of  beauty  in  form  and  color  as  ever 
existed,  and  profusely  pouring  over  the  cold  minds  of 
his  countrymen  creations  of  grace  and  truth,  removing 


45o  Emerson  on  England. 

the  reproach  of  sterility  from  English  art,  catching  from 
their  savage  climate  every  fine  hint,  and  importing  into 
their  galleries  every  tint  and  trait  of  summer  cities  and 
skies,  making  an  era  in  painting,  and,  when  he  saw 
that  the  splendor  of  one  of  his  pictures  in  the  Exhibi 
tion  dimmed  his  rivals,  that  hung  next  to  it,  secretly 
took  a  brush  and  blackened  his  own." 

It  is  this  love  of  reality,  joined  to  an  intense  confi 
dence  in  the  power  and  performance  of  his  own  nation, 
which  makes  him  not  only  incurious  about  other 
nations,  but  repulsive  to  them.  He  dislikes  foreigners, 
but  he  is  no  less  disliked  by  them.  An  English  lady 
on  the  Rhine,  hearing  a  German  speaking  of  her  party 
as  foreigners,  exclaimed,  "No,  we  are  not  foreigners— 
we  are  English  ;  it  is  you  that  are  foreigners  !"  The 
English  have  not  only  a  high  opinion  of  themselves 
and  a  poor  one  of  everybody  else,  but  they  are  given 
to  brag,  often  unconsciously,  of  their  own  exploits. 
"  The  habit  of  brag  runs  through  all  classes,  from  the 
Times  newspaper,  through  politicians  and  poets,  through 
Wordsworth,  Carlyle,  Mill,  and  Sydney  Smith,  down  to 
the  boys  at  Eton.  In  the  gravest  treatise  on  political 
economy,  in  books  of  science,  one  is  surprised  by  the 
innocent  exhibition  of  unflinching  nationality."  In  a 
tract  on  Corn,  an  amiable  and  accomplished  gentleman 
(William  Spence)  writes  thus  :  "Though  Britain  were 
surrounded  by  a  wall  ten  thousand  cubits  in  height, 
still  she  would  as  far  excel  the  rest  of  the  globe  in 
riches  as  she  now  does,  both  in  this  secondary  quality, 
and  in  the  more  important  ones  of  freedom,  virtue,  and 
science."  Bull  is  apt  to  make  his  heavy  fun  over  the 
national  vanity  of  Jonathan ;  but  Jonathan  is  only  a 
distant  imitation  of  his  father. 

Meanwhile,  one  of  the  finer  sides  of  their  strong 
nationality  is  that  love  of  the  domestic  circle,  which  has 


Emerson  on  England.  461 

rendered  the  English  home  proverbial  for  its  sanctity, 
its  purity,  its  sweetness,  and  its  comfort.  "Bom  in  a 
harsh  and  wet  climate,  which  keeps  man  indoors  when 
ever  he  is  at  rest,  and  being  of  an  affectionate  arid  loyal 
temper,  he  dearly  loves  his  home.  If  he  be  rich,  he 
buys  a  demesne  and  builds  a  hall ;  if  he  be  in  middle 
condition,  he  spares  no  expense  on  his  house.  With 
out,  it  is  all  planted  :  within,  it  is  wainscoted,  carved, 
painted,  curtained,  hung  with  pictures,  and  filled  with 
good  furniture.  Tis  a  passion,  which  survives  all 
others,  to  deck  and  improve  it.  Hither  he  brings  all 
that  is  rare  and  costly,  and  with  the  national  tendency 
to  sit  fast  on  the  same  spot  for  many  generations,  it 
comes  to  be,  in  course  of  time,  a  museum  of  heirlooms, 
gifts,  and  trophies  of  adventures  and  exploits  of  the 
family.  He  is  very  fond  of  silver  plate,  and,  though 
he  have  no  gallery  of  portraits  of  his  ancestors,  he  has 
of  their  punch-bowls  and  porringers."  "England 
produces,  under  favorable  conditions  of  ease  and  cul 
ture,  the  finest  women  in  the  world  ;  and  as  the  men 
are  affectionate  and  true-hearted,  the  women  inspire 
and  refine  them.  Nothing  can  be  more  delicate  with 
out  being  fantastical — nothing  more  firm  and  based  in 
nature  and  sentiment,  than  the  courtship  and  mutual 
carriage  of  the  sexes.  The  sentiment  of  Imogen,  in 
Cymbeline,  is  copied  from  English  nature  ;  and  not 
less  the  Portia  of  Brutus,  the  Kate  Percy,  and  the  Des- 
demona.  The  romance  does  not  exceed  the  height  of 
noble  passion  in  Mrs.  Lucy  Hutchinson,  or  in  Lady 
Russell/' 

Among  other  qualities  of  the  English. on  which  Mr. 
Emerson  dilates,  is  the  absolute  homage  they  pay  to 
wealth,  which  they  esteem  a  final  certificate  of  all 
worth.  In  exact  proportion  is  the  reproach  of  poverty. 
Sydney  Smith  said  poverty  is  infamous  in  England. 


452  Emerson  on  England. 

The  ground  of  this  pride  in  wealth  is  the  prodigious 
labor  by  which  it  has  been  accumulated.  The  English 
man  sees  in  it  whole  centuries  of  invention,  toil,  and 
economy.  He  derives  from  it  an  ideal  perfection  of 
property — the  vastest  social  uses — miracles  of  luxury 
and  enjoyment.  Yet  there  is,  also,  an  increasing  dan 
ger  lest  this  servant  should  become  his  master.  The 
wealth  of  England  has  led  to  an  intolerable  despotism 
of  expense.  Not  the  aims  of  a  manly  life,  but  the 
means  of  meeting  a  ponderous  outlay,  is  the  end 
placed  before  a  youth  emerging  from  his  minority.  A 
large  family  is  reckoned  a  misfortune.  At  the  same 
time  there  is  a  preposterous  worship  of  aristocracy  in 
England,  though  the  aristocracy,  which  has  not  been 
without  its  uses  in  disciplining  manners  and  fostering 
the  fine  arts,  is  now  decaying.  The  old  Bohuns  and 
De  Veres  are  gone;  but  "lawyers,  farmers,  and  silk- 
mercers  lie  perdu  in  their  coronets,  and  wink  to  the  an 
tiquary  to  say  nothing."  As  to  the  Established  Church 
of  England,  Mr.  Emerson  considers  it  pretty  much  of 
a  sham,  having  nothing  left  but  possession,  where 
people  attend  as  a  matter  of  good-breeding,  but  with 
no  vital  interest  in  its  proceedings. 

The  literature  of  the  nation,  however,  is  stronger  and 
truer,  showing  the  solidest  sense,  the  most  earnest 
labor,  the  roughest  vigor,  and  the  readiest  mechanical 
skill.  But,  excepting  the  splendid  age  of  Bacon  and 
Shakspeare,  English  literature  has  not  attained  the 
loftiest  heights.  It  is  too  direct,  practical,  hard,  unro- 
mantic,  and  unpoetic.  It  has  accurate  perceptions, 
takes  hold  of  things  by  the  right  ends,  but  it  must 
stand  on  a  fact.  A  kind  of  mental  materialism  runs 
through  it.  Plain  strong  speech  it  likes  better  than 
soaring  into  the  clouds.  Even  in  its  elevation,  its 
poetry  is  common  sense  inspired,  or  iron  raised  to  a 


Emerson  on  England.  453 

white  heat.  "The  bias  of  Englishmen  to  practical 
skill  has  reacted  on  the  national  mind.  They  are  in 
capable  of  an  inutility,  and  respect  the  five  mechanic 
powers  even  in  their  song.  The  voice  of  their  modern 
muse  has  a  slight  hint  of  the  steam-whistle,  and  the 
poem  is  created  as  an  ornament  and  finish  of  their 
monarchy,  and  by  no  means  as  the  bird  of  a  new  morn 
ing,  which  forgets  the  past  world  in  the  full  enjoyment 
of  that  which  is  forming.  They  are  with  difficulty 
ideal ;  they  are  the  most  conditioned  men,  as  if,  having 
the  best  conditions,  they  could  not  bring  themselves  to 
forfeit  them.  Every  one  of  them  is  a  thousand  years 
old  and  lives  by  his  memory ;  and  when  you  say  this, 
they  accept  it  as  praise.  Nothing  comes  to  the  book 
shops  but  politics,  travels,  statistics,  tabulation,  and 
engineering,  and  even  what  is  called  philosophy  and 
letters  is  mechanical  in  its  structure,  as  if  inspiration 
had  ceased,  as  if  no  vast  hope,  no  religion,  no  song  of 
joy,  no  analogy  existed  any  more."  "Squalid  content 
ment  with  conventions,  satires  at  the  names  of  philos 
ophy  and  religion,  parochial  and  shop-till  politics,  and 
idolatry  of  usage  betray  the  ebb  of  life  and  spirit.  As 
they  trample  on  nationalities  to  reproduce  London  and 
Londoners  in  Europe  and  Asia,  so  they  fear  the  hos 
tility  of  ideas,  of  poetry,  of  religion — ghosts  which  they 
cannot  lay  ;  and  having  attempted  to  domesticate  and 
dress  the  blessed  soul  itself  in  English  broadcloth  and 
gaiters,  they  are  tormented  with  fear  that  herein  lurks  a 
force  that  will  sweep  their  system  away."  The  artists 
say  "nature  puts  them  out;  the  scholars  have  become 
an  ideal."  Poetry  is  degraded  and  made  ornamental. 
Pope's  verses  were  a  kind  of  frosted  cake  ;  Sir  Walter 
Scott  wrote  rhymed  travellers'  guides  to  Scotland  ;  Ten 
nyson  is  factitious,  "climbing  no  mount  of  vision." 
Hallam  is  a  learned  and  elegant  scholar,  rich  and  wise, 


454  Emerson  on  England. 

but  retrospective ;  Dickens  prepares  London  tracts, 
generous  but  local ;  Thackeray  thinks  we  must  re 
nounce  ideals  and  accept  London  ;  and  the  brilliant 
Macaulay  explicitly  teaches  that  good  means  good  to 
eat  or  good  to  wear,  material  commodity.  The  ex 
ceptions  to  this  limitary  tone  of  thought  are  Coleridge, 
who  was  a  catholic  mind  ;  Wordsworth,  whose  verse 
was  a  voice  of  sanity  in  a  worldly  and  ambitious  age  ; 
and  Wilkinson,  the  editor  of  Swedenborg,  in  the  action 
of  whose  mind  is  a  long  Atlantic  roll,  not  known  except 
in  deepest  waters. 

We  should  like  to  go  on  thus,  culling  fine  and  sharp 
things,  though  we  do  not  think  them  always  true,  as 
for  example,  much  that  is  said  above  of  literature  ;  but, 
if  we  should,  it  would  leave  us  no  space  for  the  few 
words  that  it  is  necessary  to  say,  in  the  way  of  a  general 
estimate  of  his  performance.  As  a  collection  of  apo 
thegms  on  England,  of  which  each  one  has  a  species 
of  diamond  clearness  and  value,  his  book  is  exqui 
sitely  rich.  Never  in  history  have  so  many  discrimi 
nating  sentences  been  uttered  about  any  people.  But, 
as  a  whole,  the  book  does  not  entirely  satisfy  us,  for  the 
want  of  a  certain  gradation,  or  proportion  in  the  parts, 
which  gives  harmony.  The  author's  mind,  being  essen 
tially  instinctive,  and  not  discursive  or  logical,  he  sees 
things  absolutely  rather  than  relatively,  and  in  their 
kinds  and  not  in  their  degrees.  This  is  evident  in  the 
very  form  of  his  book,  which  has  no  organic  structure, 
but  is  a  miscellany  of  remarks  on  one  topic.  Whether 
you  begin  at  the  last  chapter  or  the  first — at  the  bottom 
of  the  page  or  the  top,  it  is  almost  equally  intelligible 
and  equally  interesting.  There  is  no  progress  or  march 
of  thought  in  it — no  rising  and  falling  of  the  flood — no 
grand  or  rapid  modulations — in  a  word,  no  growth — 
but  an  incessant  succession  of  discharges  as  in  a  feu  de 


Emerson  on  England.  455 

joie.  Each  paragraph  has  its  own  independent  validity, 
and  would  be  just  as  good  elsewhere  and  in  another 
chapter.  As  in  staccato  passages  of  music,  each  note  is 
pointed,  distinct,  and  of  equal  value,  and  when  long 
continued  gives  the  ear  a  painful  sense  of  a  want  of  va 
riety  and  contrast.  Mr.  Emerson  tells  us  an  infinity  of 
truths  about  John  Bull ;  but  he  does  not  furnish  us  what 
the  Frenchmen  call  an  impression  d1  ensemble.  He  has 
anatomized  him,  but  forgotten  to  organize  him  afterward. 
He  is  like  a  painter  who  should  make  a  most  careful  study 
of  the  several  parts  of  his  subject  on  different  pieces  of 
canvas — a  head  here,  a  leg  there,  and  a  torso  in  another 
place — and  then  fail  to  bring  them  together  into  one. 
Each  study  may  be  perfect ;  but  what  we  want  to  see  is 
the  complete  man.  We  want  to  see*  him  as  he  moves 
and  breathes  in  his  multiplied  relations. 

Mr.  Emerson  writes  memoirs  to  serve,  and  not  a 
biography.  He  nowhere  lays  hold  of  the  central  idea 
of  English  life.  It  is  too  vast,  he  confesses — a  myriad 
personality.  In  the  absence  of  this  organic  unity,  not 
a  few  of  his  representations  seem  to  contradict  each 
other,  because  they  are  not  qualified  one  by  the  other. 
His  Englishman  is  more  than  a  compound  of  antago 
nistic  elements — he  is  a  bundle  of  confusions.  He 
loves  truth  above  all  things,  and  yet  willingly  immerses 
himself  in  fictions.  He  is  a  pink  of  propriety  and  full 
of  freaks.  His  individuality  is  intense,  and  he  cringes 
to  aristocracy.  He  detests  humbug,  while  he  gladly 
worships  a  humbug  church,  a  humbug  nobility,  hum 
bug  laws,  and  humbug  newspapers  ;  and  his  mind  is  an 
arrested  development,  though  it  sprouts  into  the  great 
est  men  that  the  world  has  seen  for  five  hundred  years. 
It  is  difficult,  we  admit,  to  penetrate  the  spirit  of  a  na 
tion,  as  if  it  were  a  single  hero  ;  but  it  is  not  impossible 
to  a  mind  which  is  able  to  generalize  as  well  as  discern. 


456  Emerson  on  England. 

There  are  in  every  nation,  as  in  every  race,  some  traits 
which  are  central,  and  others  only  circumferential ;  some 
which  are  leading  and  determinative  ;  and  others  which 
are  merely  superficial,  and  these,  we  presume,  may  be 
easily  separated  and  combined  into  a  living  whole.  In 
this  regard,  we  may  say  that,  "English  Traits'  answers 
admirably  to  its  name,  but  it  does  not  so  completely 
answer  the  question  of  the  opening  chapter — Why  Eng 
land  is  England  ?  It  hints  innumerable  answers,  but 
leaves  the  reader  undecided  as  to  which  one  or  which 
dozen  of  them  is  the  master-key  of  the  problem. 

What  strikes  the  casual  visitor  to  England  most  deep 
ly,  is  the  prodigious  and  compact  activity  of  the  nation, 
and  the  wealth  which  it  has  thereby  accumulated,  in  con 
nection  with  the  extreme  brutality  and  degradation  of 
the  more  numerous  classes.  We  remember,  for  our 
selves,  that  a  great  deal  of  the  anticipated  pleasure  of  a 
tour  in  the  old  country  was  dashed,  on  the  evening  of 
our  arrival  in  Liverpool,  by  the  sight  of  the  multitudes 
of  stolid  and  hopeless  poor,  who  seemed  to  crowd  every 
alley.  Nor  was  it  otherwise  in  the  manufacturing  towns 
or  even  in  the  agricultural  districts.  We  were  charmed 
by  the  rural  beauty,  we  were  dazzled  by  the  urban  op 
ulence — but  behind  those  trim  hedges  we  could  not 
help  seeing  the  pale  and  skulking  forms  of  the  wretched 
cotters,  and  from  beneath  those  magnificent  piles  of  ma 
sonry  we  heard  the  groans  of  the  toiling  millions.  We 
found  afterward  plenty  of  misery  and  indigence  in  the 
cities  of  France — plenty  in  Italy — and  plenty  in  Germa 
ny — but  nowhere  did  it  seem  so  utterly  miserable,  and 
so  imbruted  in  its  misery,  as  in  England.  In  the  na 
tions  of  the  continent  it  is  relieved  by  a  gay  vivacity  of 
temper,  by  a  greater  picturesqueness  of  costume  and 
custom  ;  but  in  England,  it  is  a  sombre,  stolid,  filthy 
sub-animal  debasement.  Among  these  classes  Mr. 


Emerson  on  England.  457 

Emerson  does  not  appear  to  have  tarried.  "Cushioned 
and  comforted  in  every  manner,"  he  says,  "the  traveller 
rides  as  on  a  cannon-ball,  high  and  low,  over  rivers  and 
towns,  through  mountains,  in  tunnels  of  three  or  four 
miles -at  near  twice  the  speed  of  our  trains — reading 
quietly  the  Times  newspaper  ;"  and  we  can,  from  his 
book,  readily  believe  that  such  was  his  method  of  pro 
gression.  We  doubt  whether  he  laid  his  ear  any 
where  to  the  great  heart  of  the  people,  to  hear  what 
they  might  have  to  .say  of  the  greatness  and  glory  that 
was  round  about  them.  In  fact,  society  as  such,  the 
relation  and  conditions  of  its  several  components,  did 
not  occupy  much  of  his  attention — though  the  social 
organization  of  England  is  one  of  the  most  peculiar 
and  profoundly  interesting  of  human  phenomena. 

A  larger  experience  of  this  society  would  have  saved 
him  from  some  very  singular  misjudgments.  When  he 
commends  the  personal  independence  and  freedom  of 
Englishmen,  for  instance,  when  he  says  that  each  man 
walks,  eats,  drinks,  shaves,  dresses,  gesticulates,  and  in 
every  manner  acts  and  suffers  in  his  own  fashion,  he 
must  draw  his  inferences  from  a  narrow  circle  of  intel 
lectual  men,  and  not  from  the  community  at  large. 
Next  to  the  extreme  squalor  and  stupidity  of  the  lower 
classes  in  England,  what  impresses  the  stranger  most 
painfully  is  a  certain  despotism  of  opinion,  which  pro 
duces  the  utmost  conformity  in  manners  and  conduct. 
In  Paris,  Vienna,  Rome,  and  even  New  York,  one  feels 
that  he  can  do  pretty  much  as  he  pleases,  except  to  talk 
against  the  peculiar  despotism  of  each  ;  but  in  Lon 
don — wilderness  as  it  is — you  must  dress,  walk,  and  talk 
by  the  card,  or  you  are  either  nobody  or  a  notoriety. 
A  friend  of  ours,  who  in  his  continental  and  Egyptian 
campaigns  had  sedulously  avoided  the  barber,  arrived 
at  Dover  in  hirsute  condition,  and,  from  the  moment 

20 


458  Emerson  on  England. 

that  he  landed  until  he  stepped  on  board  the  Pacific  at 
Liverpool,  was  as  conspicuous  an  object  as  the  bear  of  a 
travelling  menagerie.  At  the  eating-houses  he  was  stared 
out  of  countenance  (and  it  takes  a  great  deal  to  make 
John  look  up  from  his  dinner);  and  in  the  streets  he 
was  run  after  by  the  little  boys,  who  called  to  their  com 
panions  to  come  and  see  the  Frencher.  This  was  be 
fore  the  Great  Exhibition  had  made  the  beard  somewhat 
familiar,  and  a  long  agitation  of  the  subject  by  the  news 
papers  had  modified  the  prevailing  prejudice.  An 
other  friend,  a  merchant  who  had  long  worn  a  mustache 
in  New  York,  having  some  business  to  transact  in  "the 
city,"  was  careful  to  remove  every  vestige  of  hair  from 
his  lips,  lest  it  might  damage  his  credit  with  the  plu 
tocrats  of  the  great  metropolis.  Such  small  incidents 
show  the  utter  intolerance  of  eccentricity  in  England. 
Rich  men  and  the  privileged  classes  who  step  beyond 
the  prescribed  limits  of  propriety  are  endured,  but  any 
body  else  who  should  do  so,  would  become  instantly 
an  object  of  unpleasant  remark.  There  are  no  greater 
slaves  to  fashion  in  the  world  than  the  English.  You 
must  live  in  a  certain  style,  and  dress  in  a  certain  mode, 
and  be  acquainted  with  certain  people  (generally  be 
longing  to  the  aristocracy),  or  you  are  neglected,  if  not 
despised.  It  is  this  obsequious  deference  to  a  peculiar 
standard  which  has  given  rise  to  that  peculiar  order 
which  the  slang  literature  denominates  snob.  It  is  an 
order  so  numerous  and  so  powerful  that  much  of  the 
best  modern  wit,  from  Thackeray  and  Jerrold  down  to 
Punch,  finds  its  chief  nutriment  in  the  exposure  of  it. 
Of  course  there  are  snobs  everywhere,  but  London 
is  their  warren  and  city  of  refuge.  Elsewhere  they 
are  vagrant  and  exceptional  instances ;  but  in  London 
they  are  quite  the  rule.  They  are  bred  in  the  highly  artifi 
cial  structure  of  society  there,  and  feed  upon  it  like  grubs. 


Emerson  on  England.  469 

Whatever  the  defects  of  English  character,  however, 
there  is  one  thing  to  be  said  of  the  nation — that  it  has 
acquired  a  more  durable  and  substantial  civilization  than 
any  other  of  the  Old  World.  Composed  essentially  of 
the  same  races  as  the  northern  continental  nations,  and 
beginning  in  the  middle  ages  with  essentially  the  same 
institutions,  it  has  developed  itself  into  a  nobler  strength. 
We  wish  Mr.  Emerson  had  gone  more  deeply  into  the 
historical  causes  of  this  difference.  There  is  no  more 
interesting  speculation  now  attracting  the  study  of  philo 
sophic  genius.  Any  one  who  will  recall  the  condition 
of  Germany,  France,  and  England,  during  the  great 
transition  period  from  ancient  to  modern  society,  from 
the  twelfth  to  the  fifteenth  century,  inclusive,  will  be 
struck  by  the  remarkable  similarity  of  their  laws,  cus 
toms,  maxims,  and  morals.  There  was,  of  course,  a 
vast  diversity  in  details — but  the  general  arrangement, 
the  general  spirit,  the  general  tendency  was  the  same. 
Government  was  managed  on  the  same  principles — so 
ciety  was  divided  by  the  same  classes,  and  there  were 
kings,  nobles,  clergy,  commons,  people,  and  slaves, 
everywhere — with  identical  distinctions,  as  to  privileges, 
rights,  and  oppressions.  In  other  words,  feudalism  was 
the  prevailing  and  organic  law  ;  and,  as  De  Tocqueville 
has  lately  remarked,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  the  social, 
political,  administrative,  judicial,  economical,  and  lite 
rary  institutions  were  more  nearly  akin  to  each  other 
than  at  the  present  time,  when  civilization  is  supposed 
to  have  opened  all  the  channels  of  communication,  and 
to  have  levelled  every  obstacle.  Even  as  late  as  the  be 
ginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  Henry  VIII. 
was  monarch  of  England,  Francis  I.  of  France,  and 
Charles  II.  of  the  German  Empire,  there  was  a  marvel 
lous  analogy  in  the  condition  and  prospects  of  these 
several  powers.  But  from  that  time,  how  diverse  the 


460  Emerson  on  England. 

development  ?  Germany,  in  which  the  great  reforma 
tion  of  thought  opened  with  such  signal  glory,  has  at 
tained  to  no  more  than  a  feeble  political  life  ;  France, 
after  swaying  hither  and  thither  between  the  shocks  of 
successive  sanguinary  revolutions,  is  still  destitute  of 
any  genuine  constitutional  freedom  ;  while  England 
alone,  with  few  revolutions,  and  these  neither  protracted 
nor  bloody,  has  reached  something  like  freedom  and 
prosperity.  What  have  been  the  causes  of  this  ? 

It  is  not  our  intention  to  attempt  the  answer,  merely 
suggesting  it  as  the  life-task  of  some  as  yet  unknown 
Guizot  or  Hallam  ;  but  we  may  remark,  that  none  of 
the  English  speculators  themselves,  who  ascribe  so  much 
influence  to  the  mixed  character  of  their  government, 
seem  to  us  to  have  adequately  stated  or  treated  the 
problem.  The  artificial  equipoise,  which  it  has  main 
tained  between  the  several  estates  or  orders,  has  been, 
no  doubt,  a  fact  of  prime  importance  ;  but  what  is  the 
real  ground  of  its  importance  ?  Is  it  not  the  larger  in 
fusion  of  the  democratic  element  in  English  institutions 
than  in  those  of  the  continent  ?  The  popular  life  which 
has  ever  and  anon  forced  itself  into  the  government, 
has  kept  the  political  atmosphere  sweet  and  wholesome. 
It  is  owing  to  this  that  the  absolutism  of  the  monarch 
has  been  restrained,  the  selfishness  of  the  nobles  with 
held  from  an  extremity  of  corruption,  and  the  middle 
classes  lifted  into  wealth  and  intelligence.  But  it  can 
not  be  concealed,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  lowest- 
classes  in  England  are  so  debased  and  forlorn,  because 
they  have  not  yet  been  made  partakers  of  the  common 
political  life.  England  has  prospered  more  than  other 
nations,  because,  more  than  they,  she  has  recognized 
the  humanity  of  her  people  ;  but  in  so  far  as  she  has 
failed  to  recognize  it,  she  has  been  smitten,  like  others, 
with  barrenness  and  misery.  Her  mixed  constitution 


Emerson  on  England.  461 

has  proved  itself  a  better  device  than  despotism,  not  be 
cause  balances  and  counterpoises  are  the  ultimate  or 
perfect  form  of  government,  as  many  Englishmen  sup 
pose,  but  because  of  the  large  element  of  freedom  in  it ; 
and  the  true  inference  is,  that  a  larger  measure  of  that 
element  would  produce  still  better  effects.  In  the 
transition  from  feudalism  to  freedom,  a  mixed  govern 
ment  affords  an  easier  and  safer  passage  than  any  ab 
solute  form  ;  but  a  mixed  government  can  never  be 
anything  more  than  a  transition,  while  democracy  alone 
is  final. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $I.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


OCT,  15  IMS 

MAY    9  1970  2  2 

gEC'D  I  r»    AU6  3 

70  -6  PM  ~    b 

LB  21-100m-12,'43(8796s) 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


